MOVING PICTURES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 17, 21 January 1931, Page 4

MOVING PICTURES

REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES

In a .general survey o£ events in tho film business, the annual report of the New Zealand Motion Picture Exhibitors' Association, presented to the annual conference to-day, stated tlr&t at no previous time had the. business been confronted with such a combination of difficult" circumstances as during the past year. . _ "The revolutionary changes , produced by the,talkies were ; in themselves productive of many problems," says the report. '' The adjustment to changed conditions of the high film rentals brought about by the novelty boom was not the'least of those. In addition there were the inevitable financial and other difficulties involved by exhibitors in adapting themselves to the new conditions. Those difficulties have all been enormously increased by the prevailing trade depression and its accompanying evil of acute' unemployment. Those conditions, however, have not been peculiar to New Zealand, but seem to have prevailed in at least all the Englishspeaking world. In addition, however, we have had the unique distinction of• a hold-up in film supplies, and there can be little doubt but that the action of the American distributors has had an adverse effect on the public support of our industry. . . . "On looking ahead into the coming year, we naturally regard the'taxation inquiry as the first difficulty to be met. There is also an anxious looking ahead for a general improvement in. trade conditions. Though signs of. this are not wanting, it would be idle, to expect .any general- improvement; till after the coming winter." Another passage in the report states: "Owing to the many disturbances m the industry during the last twelve months, there has been more than the ordinary fluctuations in membership. Many of tho smaller country shows, where population does not justify the installation of talkies, have been forced to close down owing to talkie competition in adjoining towns. The number so affected during 1930 was 33. This, of course, has had an adverse effect on membership, which on 31st December, 1930, stood at 353, as compared •with 381 at tho samo date of the previous year."