page_title: Harvey Weinstein
section_title: 1980s: Success with arthouse and independent films
hierarchical_section_title: Harvey Weinstein / Film career / 1980s: Success with arthouse and independent films
context_page_description: Harvey Weinstein is an American former film producer. He and his brother Bob Weinstein co-founded the entertainment company Miramax, which produced successful independent films including Sex, Lies, and Videotape, The Crying Game, Pulp Fiction, Heavenly Creatures, Flirting with Disaster, and Shakespeare in Love. Weinstein won an Academy Award for producing Shakespeare in Love and seven Tony Awards for plays and musicals, including The Producers, Billy Elliot the Musical, and August: Osage County. After leaving Miramax, Weinstein and his brother Bob founded The Weinstein Company, a mini-major film studio. He was co-chairman, alongside Bob, from 2005 to 2017.
  In October 2017, following sexual abuse allegations, Weinstein was dismissed from his company and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. More than 80 women had made allegations against Weinstein by October 31. The allegations sparked the #MeToo social media campaign and many similar sexual abuse allegations against powerful men around the world; this phenomenon is referred to as the "Weinstein effect". Weinstein was arrested and charged with rape in New York in May 2018.
context_section_description: In the early 1980s, Miramax acquired the rights to two British films of benefit shows filmed for the human rights organization Amnesty International. Working closely with Martin Lewis, the producer of the original films, the Weinstein brothers edited the two films into one movie tailored for the American market. The resulting film was released as The Secret Policeman's Other Ball in May 1982, and it became Miramax's first hit. The movie raised considerable sums for Amnesty International and was credited by Amnesty with having helped to raise its profile in the United States. 
  The Weinsteins slowly built upon this success throughout the 1980s with arthouse films that achieved critical attention and modest commercial success. Harvey Weinstein and Miramax gained wider attention in 1988 with the release of Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line, which detailed the struggle of Randall Dale Adams, a wrongfully convicted inmate sentenced to death row. The publicity that soon surrounded the case resulted in Adams' release and nationwide publicity for Miramax. In 1989, their successful launch release of Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape propelled Miramax to become the most successful independent studio in America.
  Also in 1989, Miramax released two arthouse films, Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, and director Pedro Almodóvar's film Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, both of which the MPAA rating board gave an X-rating, effectively stopping nationwide release for these films. Weinstein sued the MPAA over the rating system. His lawsuit was later thrown out, but the MPAA introduced the NC-17 rating two months later.
caption: Weinstein at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival
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