Whiland International S.A.

Background
Whiland International S.A. is a South American television distribution company. The company is headquartered in Montevideo, Uruguay, but was registered in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It was formed as Telefilms, S.A. in 1961, by León Darcyl, a former Time-Life correspondent, who had just bought the Latin American TV rights to the RKO film library. Mr. Darcyl had bought the television rights to the 1937 Mexican film Allá en el Rancho Grande, with money borrowed from Time-Life, for broadcast on LS83-TV in Buenos Aires. The Mexican film proved to be popular with local audiences, and he looked to expand its venture. Darcyl was one of the first to go beyond the country-by-country basis (as it was practice at the time), and paved the way for the Western entertainment companies to release their product for all of the Latin American countries. Among the shows syndicated by Telefilms were Lassie (whose rights are now with Classic Media), Get Smart (whose rights were reverted to HBO) and Flipper (whose rights are now owned by MGM) and many Japanese cartoon series, as well some British television programmes. Among the film libraries distributed by Telefilms were the aforementioned RKO library, the Selznick International Pictures film library (minus Gone with the Wind, then owned by MGM and currently owned by Turner Entertainment/Warner Bros.), the Hal Roach library, the Charlie Chaplin library, the Buster Keaton library, the Cantinflas library (except for co-productions with Columbia Pictures) and the Saul Zaentz library.

By the late 1980s, Telefilms evolved into a holding company, Whiland International, S.A., and the Darcyls began a new wave of acquisitions. Whiland had acquired the Latin American TV rights to the Carolco and Orion libraries (now owned by StudioCanal and MGM respectively), as well of the Majestic and the New Regency/WB library (the latter of which its rights have been reverted to Warners). In 2002, the Darcyls set up a film distribution subsidiary, SUN Distribution. The company has the largest film library in Latin America.

(1990s-Early 2000s?)


Visuals: On a dark-grey marble background that moves to the top right, the serif-font letters "wtv" in gold zoom out from the lower right. Once "wtv" settles down, the letters of "WHILAND" in white spread out carousel-wise below it in the lower left. The background stops moving, and "International S.A." (in smaller text) fades in next to "WHILAND".

Technique: CGI effects.

Audio: A whoosh, followed by a seven-note wind-chime fanfare in G major (the last coming after a delay of several beats) and a nuanced wind howl.

Availability: Seen on Latin American TV prints of several Orion and Carolco films (along with select titles from Britain's Rank Organisation) in the 1990s, and occasionally sighted during this era on the region's version of the TNT network. Has been mostly replaced with logos of successor companies (Orion is now part of MGM; the Carolco library is part of StudioCanal) in the years since.