Chris Blackwell's Palm Pictures has acquired NorthAmerican and UK rights to Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, five films, the last of which Cremaster 3 screens in the Frontier section of the Sundance FilmFestival next week.

The films will be the first to be distributed by Palm'snew Arthouse Films label in North America and the UK. The deal was negotiatedby David Koh, Palm's head of acquisitions and production, and by Jose MartinezJr, general manager of Arthouse Films, and Palm acquisitions executive RichardBrown. CAA represented artist and director Barney and producer BarbaraGladstone of the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in the deal.

Eightyears in the making, Cremaster 3 includes participation from such personalitiesas Norman Mailer, Ursula Andress and Barney himself. The visual arts narrativeproject was written, directed and produced by Barney whose body of work and thefive films in the Cremaster Cycle will be the subject of a retrospective atthe Guggenheim Museum in New York City starting at the end of next month.

Arthousewill release Cremaster 3 theatrically followed by a touring cycle of all five filmsand then a DVD which will include material not available theatrically andbehind-the-scenes footage.

The acquisitionof the films is the latest in a series of movie acquisitions by Palm which hasincluded Baltasar Kormakur's The Sea, Oxide and Danny Pang's The Eye and Fulltime Killer from Johnnie To and Wai Ka Fai.