The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements.

The foundation of the collection is the work of such masters of cinema as Renoir, Godard, Kurosawa, Cocteau, Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Fuller, Lean, Kubrick, Lang, Sturges, Dreyer, Eisenstein, Ozu, Sirk, Bunuel, Powell and Pressburger. Each film in the collection is presented uncut, in its original aspect ratio, as its maker intended it to be seen. Our supplements enable viewers to appreciate Criterion films in context, through audio commentaries by filmmakers and scholars, restored director's cuts, deleted scenes, shooting scripts, early shorts, storyboards. To date, more than 35 filmmakers have made our Director Approved library of laserdiscs and DVDs the most significant archive of contemporary filmmaking available to the home viewer.

Longtime Criterion collectors, to whom we owe our thanks, have come to trust the Criterion banner as a symbol of technical excellence, groundbreaking supplements, and only the very best in film. Our first priority is never to disappoint that trust.

Criterion's mission statement.

How Movies Work: "How Movies Work offers the filmgoer an engaging and informative guide to the appreciation and evaluation of films. It provides a comprehensive consideration of movies from idea to script, casting, financing, shooting and distribution. Bruce Kawin addresses the book not just to students of film but to any filmgoer curious to know more about the process of the conception and creation of our favorite entertainment and art form."

A Short History of the Movies: "The seventh edition of A Short History of the Movies continues the tradition that has made it one of the most popular books ever in film history. This volume offers students a panoramic overview of the worldwide development of film, from the early Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin shorts, through the studio heyday of the 1930s and 1940s and the Hollywood Renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s, to the pictures and their technology appearing in the multiplexes of today. This new edition, which has been revised and rewritten to reflect current scholarship and recent industry developments, and new films and filmmakers, represents an accurate, scrupulous updating of a classic."