http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/movies/24film.html
By flying low and not spending much money, New Yorker survived an amazing 44 years in a fast-churning business, helping launch the US reputations of everyone from the French new wave to the German filmmakers of the 70s to the young Australian filmmakers who've gone on to become some of Hollywood's most respected figures today. However, in some ways it failed to keep up with the business-- it always seemed suspicious of home video, for instance, late to both VHS and DVD and alienating its core audience by the heaviest application of Macrovision to its VHS product of any label I know (even Disney). With a savvier understanding of the changed marketplace it could have been another Criterion, which may not be making a fortune but is certainly vibrant and central to our art film experience today in a way that New Yorker ceased being by the 1990s.For more than four decades Mr. Talbot has been one of the most prominent figures in art-house cinema in New York and the United States, controlling not only New Yorker Films but also several theaters (including the New Yorker Theater, now defunct, an important revival house at Broadway and 88th Street).
“Without a doubt it was the pre-eminent distributor of foreign art films in the United States from the mid-1960s really into the ’80s,” J. Hoberman, the senior film critic of The Village Voice, said of New Yorker Films. “And for much of the time he was the only game in town.”
Still, it played a major role in the film culture of the 60s, 70s and 80s, at least, and its founder, Dan Talbot, deserves our thanks as he goes, involuntarily, into retirement at 82.