Motion Picture Patents Company

The Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC, also known as the Edison Trust), founded in December 1908, was a trust of all the major American film companies (Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Selig, Lubin, Kalem, Star Film Company, American Pathé), the leading film distributor (George Kleine) and the biggest supplier of raw film stock, Eastman Kodak. The MPPC ended the domination of foreign films on American screens, standardized the manner in which films were distributed and exhibited in America, and improved the quality of American motion pictures by internal competition. But it also discouraged its members' entry into feature film production, and the use of outside financing, both to its members' eventual detriment.

Read more about Motion Picture Patents Company:  Creation, Policies, Backlash and Decline

Famous quotes containing the words motion picture, motion, picture and/or company:

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    We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.
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