INDEPENDENT CINEMAS’ FILM SUPPLY PROBLEMS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22666, 17 June 1948, Page 5

INDEPENDENT CINEMAS’ FILM SUPPLY PROBLEMS

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, June 17. Legislation to ensure that first-run city theatres operated by independent proprietors received a fair share of the available quality films was advocated by George Logan Johnston, proprietor of the Paramount Theatre, Wellington, in a statement submitted to the Parliamentary committee inquiring into the motion picture industry. Evidence was given on behalf of Johnston by his attorney and general manager, Sydney Spencer Bridgford, who said the position today was that if the licensing authority were to insist on the conditions of a license being carried out to the extent of providing nothing but first-run films, it would be impossible to carry out the conditions of the license held for the Paramount Theatre. Legislation Suggested To maintain a policy of first-run films of a reasonable standard in the existing circumstances at the Paramount Theatre was impossible. To maintain a policy of second-run films was equally impossible. Similarly, to . maintain even a third-run policy was impossible under the existing conditions. Bridgford suggested that the Government should introduce legislation to give reasonable protection for film supplies in respect of each license it granted, and that the Government should encourage and foster independent theatre proprietors in the public inBridgeford asked that the Government be advised of the peculiar situation at the Paramount Theatre, especially as it was the last independent city theatre in the four centres and was incapable under the present set-up of bartering against the buying power of Kerridge-Odeon Theatres and Amalgamated Theatres. Distribution of Films To secure a fairer share of the necessary quality first-run pictures, to maintain any kind of continuous policy at all as a means of ensuring a film supply to city independents, lie asked for legislation to provide that each film distributor operating in New Zealand be required by law to provide for firstrun city theatres not in either the Ker-ridge-Odeon group or Amalgamated Theatres group to have a pro-rata proportion of their available quality films so that distributors would in effect each carry their share of such a supply from year to year and, similarly, any shortage of quality films to be shared on a pro rata basis by the two groups with the independents. A suitable committee or tribunal should be set up with adequate statutory powers to enable it to direct the allocation of available film supplies on the foregoing lines' to all first-run theatres in a given area.