TLA Entertainment Group is a privately held corporation based in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

. It was founded in 1981. Originally formed to operate a repertory movie theater, the company subsequently moved into catalog and online sales, retail stores, film festivals and film distribution. The catalog began as a pornographic mail order business and grew to include also gay and lesbian non-pornographic films and books and mainstream films.

History

TLA stands for

Theatre of the Living Arts The Theatre of Living Arts (known commonly as the TLA) is a concert venue located on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The venue, which opened in 1988, dates back to the early 1900s as a nickelodeon. Over the years, the venue has seen ...

. Now a concert venue, it was founded as an experimental theater group in the 1960s under the direction of Andre Gregory (of ''My Dinner with Andre'' fame). The group included

Danny DeVito Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. (born November 17, 1944) is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He gained prominence for his portrayal of the taxi dispatcher Louie De Palma in the television series '' Taxi'' (1978–1983), which won him a Go ...

Judd Hirsch Judd Seymore Hirsch (born March 15, 1935) is an American actor. He is known for playing Alex Rieger on the television comedy series '' Taxi'' (1978–1983), John Lacey on the NBC series '' Dear John'' (1988–1992), and Alan Eppes on the CBS se ...

Sally Kirkland Sally Kirkland (born October 31, 1941) is an American film, television and stage actress and producer. A former member of Andy Warhol's The Factory and an active member in 1960s New York avant-garde theater, she has appeared in more than 250 fi ...

and

Ron Leibman Ron Leibman (; October 11, 1937 – December 6, 2019) was an American actor. He won both the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play in 1993 for his performance as Roy Cohn in ''Angels in Ame ...

who performed exclusively in the Theater of the Living Arts on South Street in

. By the mid- to late-60s, funding for the Theater was running out and the theater was converted to a movie house showing an eclectic mix of classic and foreign films. In 1981, the founding partners of TLA Entertainment Group (Raymond Murray, Claire Brown-Kohler, Alex Roberts and Roman Czenchtuch) met and subsequently ran the theater. For the next six years the TLA was a repertory art movie theater. In addition, for four of those six years, the partners ran a small, first-run art house, the Roxy Screening Room, also located in Center City Philadelphia. The Theater of the Living Arts is no longer affiliated with TLA Entertainment Group. On January 30, 2014 Sterling Genesis International of New York City acquired the company. G. Sterling Zinsmeyer became chairman of the group. In 2015 the company launched the

Dekkoo Dekkoo is a Philadelphia-based subscription streaming service with a focus on LGBT+ related content, particularly by and for gay men. It features a mixture of programs from other sources and original content, and derives its income from subscripti ...

video streaming service.

Video stores

In 1985, the first video store was opened next door to Theater of the Living Arts. The stores expanded into a chain, and by 2005 there were four stores in Philadelphia and one in New York. (The NYC store was in a building previously occupied by the 8th St. Playhouse.) Starting in 2007, the stores began closing, with the New York store closing first, followed by the Chestnut Hill and

Society Hill Society Hill is a historic neighborhood in Center City Philadelphia, with a population of 6,215 . Settled in the early 1680s, Society Hill is one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Philadelphia.The Center City District dates the Free Soc ...

locations in 2009, and the

Rittenhouse Square Rittenhouse Square is a neighborhood, including a public park, in Center City Philadelphia. The park is one of the five original open-space parks planned by William Penn and his surveyor Thomas Holme during the late 17th century. The neighbo ...

location in 2011. The final store, TLA Bryn Mawr remained open until October 2012.

Online sales

TLA Entertainment Group launched the TLAvideo website in 1997. The site sells gay and lesbian, American independent, international, Hollywood and pornographic DVDs and books.

Film festivals

In 1994, TLA Entertainment Group President Raymond Murray started the

Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival Philadelphia QFest was founded in Philadelphia as the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival by TLA Entertainment Group in 1995. It was given its current name, QFest, in 2009. One of the festival's founders and current Artistic Director, Raymon ...

. In 2001, TLA Entertainment Group assumed management of the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, now called The

Philadelphia Film Festival The Philadelphia Film Festival is a film festival founded by the Philadelphia Film Society held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The annual festival is held at various theater venues throughout the Delaware Valley, Greater Philadelphia Area. Overv ...

. The two-week festival shows over 100 feature films from around the world. In order to better fund these events, in August 2001 TLA Entertainment Group spun them off and created the non-profit Philadelphia Film Society.

Film distribution

TLA Releasing TLA Releasing is a US film distribution and production company owned by TLA Entertainment Group. In March 2011, a new LLC was formed for the operation. Its primary output is LGBT-related films from all over the world under the "TLA Releasing" la ...

is the licensing division of TLA Entertainment. It is focused on the acquisition of distribution rights of international, independent, and gay and lesbian films to theaters and on DVD and VHS. TLA Releasing releases two films a month for the home entertainment market. The catalog of films is available online.

Bibliography

TLA Entertainment Group has published two books: * *

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tla Entertainment Group Companies based in Philadelphia Entertainment companies of the United States