MOVIES IN S. AFRICAN VILLAGE

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 June 1936, Page 3

MOVIES IN S. AFRICAN VILLAGE

NATIVES PUZZLED. Cinemas, known in South Africa as "bioscopes,” are attracting twice as many patrons to-day as they did six years ago (says the .Johannesburg correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor”).

The proceeds from entertainment tax last year amounted to ,£272,223 and if has been variously estimated that the weekly attendance at bioscopes is between 1000 and 2ouo. The large majority of these are Europeans, to thousands of whom the visit to the local movie is the main source of recreation. Even the smallest country village has its weekly or bi-weekly "show” and new halls tire being opened and new theatres built every year.

Non-Europeans too, are attending the bioscopes in increasing numbers. In the Cape and Natal, films made in India, are shown to the Malay and Indian communities, but the native and half-caste movie fans have to do with films produced in Britain and America.

The half-castes, with their “white” outlook, prefer the sophisticated type of film, but the natives occasionally find them bewildering, depicting as they do a life utterly unlike anything of which they have had direct experience.

So eager are many of them for spectacular entertainment, however, that they go to the bioscopes regularly and sit engrossed through detective stories, society dramas and low comedies alike.