AUSTRALIAN FILM DISTRIBUTORS

Evening Star, Issue 22627, 20 April 1937, Page 16

AUSTRALIAN FILM DISTRIBUTORS

♦ DRASTIC ACTION CONTEMPLATED i MAY WITHDRAW PICTURES FROM COUNTRY ’Although the motion picture distributors of Australia have made no official statement, it is known that the members of this organisation (who include all the American film exchanges) are considering complete withdrawal of their pictures from New South Wales or even from Australia. This action, which will take place, if it occurs at ail, at the end of the present year, will be a direct result of the State Ministry’s attempts to force the American companies to comply wtih the Film Quota Act. ’ The companies concerned maintain that it will be cheaper in the long run to sacrifice their profits in the Australian market than to spend money on production here. At the end of last year it became apparent that the purpose of the Act had not been realised. Most of the American and English companies had simply disregarded 3 its requirements. They claimed that the Act as it stood could not force them to produce films in Australia. The most it could do in its present form, they contended, was to compel them to buy whatever Australian productions happened to have appeared on the market in the ordinary way. Not nearly enough Australian pictures were made last year, they say, to fulfil the stipulated quota. ~lhe case for the American exchanges was stated by Mr P. Reisman, a vicepresident of R.K.O. Radio Pictures. “ In Great Britain last year,” he said, ‘‘ the American film companies among them lost £700,000 in the production of films to comply with the British Government's quota. I grant you that the British quota is now reaching 20 per cent., while the first year’s quota is only 5 per cent. By the third year the Australian quota will be 13 per cent, of the total number of pictures we distribute. This means that by 1939 we should be losing anything up to £600,000 on our quota films produced in Australia. The total profits which go to the 'United States from the operations of American companies here amount to only £730,000 a year. It seems fairly obvious that we cannot afford, such a slice out of our earnings.”