Visual Arts Home Entertainment

Background: Visual Arts Home Entertainment was founded in 1973 originally known as "Visual Arts Home Video" by releasing its film and television libraries on video. In 1979, VA joined forces with MTM Video Enterprises, the home video division of MTM Enterprises, and established "MTM/VA Home Video", which released its first VHS batch (consisting of 16 VA titles and 8 MTM Video titles) in October 1980. MTM/VA Home Video was later renamed to "Visual Arts/Cinema City Home Video" in 1982 after MTM ended its venture with VA since VA acquired Cinema City a year earlier. In 1986, after VA's pre-1986 library (also including most of the pre-1950 Shaw Bros. Pictures library, a fraction of some Cinema City material, and most US rights to the BGC Broadcast Pictures library (although BGC retains the copyrights to their films)), was acquired by Anthony Sullivan and forming "Sullivan Entertainment Co.", Visual Arts/Cinema City Home Video signed a deal with Sullivan to continue distributing the pre-1986 VA and the pre-1948 Shaw Bros. libraries for video release. In 1990, after VA was purchased by Gaumont, VA/CC signed a deal with Argosy Home Video to have them distribute its titles exclusively on video. In 1995 this division was renamed to "Visual Arts/Cinema City Home Entertainment" and also launched "Visual Arts/Cinema City Family Entertainment". In 1997, VA/CC began releasing its titles on DVD, just like every other major studio, managed to release over 30 titles from the Sullivan catalog on DVD (it was due to their video distribution deal) until it was transferred to Argosy Home Video in 1999 (after VA ended their distribution deal with Argosy Media) and folded Solaris Pictures with all its owned-library into this company. Around 1997, the Cinema City name was dropped renaming it as "Visual Arts Home Entertainment". Following VA's acquisition by the Argosy-led consortium in 2005, Argosy Home Entertainment began distributing the VA library on home video until May 31, 2006, when VA shifted most of its home entertainment output to Cairo Pictures Home Entertainment for worldwide release. CPHE's worldwide distribution deal distributing the VA library was expected to expire in September 2011, but it was later extended to end until sometime in 2016, and again on June 27, 2016, when VA extended its deal with CPHE until June 2020.