Cornell Cinema is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Janus Films -- the renowned distributor of the work of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut and Akira Kurosawa -- with screenings of several classic Janus titles and a raffle of the 50-DVD boxed set, "Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films."

Janus Films distributes new and restored prints of foreign and classic films to American art houses and repertory cinemas, including Cornell Cinema.

"Cornell's program is one of the best around," said Jonathan Turell '81, Janus Films' managing director, who donated the boxed set.

Cornell Cinema has programmed 13 Janus titles this semester, including a digitally restored print of Jean Renoir's "The Rules of the Game" and new prints of Fellini's "La Strada" and 11 other titles. Three Janus titles remain in the series: Luis Buñuel's "Viridiana," April 23 and 24; Kon Ichikawa's "The Makioka Sisters," April 30 and May 1; and Nicolas Roeg's "Walkabout," May 7-8. The raffle drawing for the boxed set will be held at the May 7 screening.

Those and other Janus films now touring were "chosen in association with Lincoln Center to spotlight the gems in the collection, and also to show films that hadn't been seen in recent years, because there were no new prints," Turell said. "The 50 that are in the box are more of the icons of the collection that maybe were in circulation more, but a permanent DVD collection would be incomplete without them."

The Janus box set includes 50 classic films on DVD and a lavishly illustrated 240-page hardcover book with notes on all the films and essays by film historian Peter Cowie and director Martin Scorsese. It sells for $650. For a listing of the films included in the set, visit http://janusfilms.com.

Raffle tickets ($5 each, five for $20) are available at Cornell Cinema's Willard Straight Hall box office during show times and from the Cornell Cinema office in 104 Willard Straight Hall during regular business hours, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays.

For information, call (607) 255-3522 or visit http://cinema.cornell.edu.