MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY

Grey River Argus, 19 March 1947, Page 2

MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY

PROGRESSIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS. So few New Zealanders have any appreciation of the magnitude of the motion picture industry in this Dominion that the following facts will be of wide interest. Among New Zelaand film exhibitors to-day there are 3,380 in daily employment, their collective salaries exceeding £492,000 per year. Payment of companies and amusement tax, too, place the industry in the roll of a major source of State revenue. Over all, and considering the large sums spent in rents and other costs, considerably less than one quarter’ of the total revenue of all theatres ever leaves New Zealand by way of film hire. Thus over 75 per cent, of every pound spent by theatre-goers stays in New Zealand and is re-spent here. This is all the more important when it is recognised that the average price per seat in a New Zealand picture theatre is still one of the lowest in the world. Furthermore the following extracts from a letter by Professor A. R. Ellis of the University of Otago and President of the Dunedin Film Institute, will summarise the thoughts of all thinking people. Professor Ellis says, inter alia—“The film is a synthesis of three great living arts, and because the whole is always greater than the part, it exceeds in force and appeal any single one of them. These three are.—The drama, the visual arts (photography and painting), and music. Its power is accentuated by association with all three.

There must naturally be pictures which satisfy every-section of the community and each section must be tolerant of the tastes of the other. The films that satisfy at 20 are probably not satisfying to a person of 40. The general tendency is for a maturation of taste to run parallel with age and education.

Now a person can have mature tastes, but due to his lack of education about films, he runs a fam chance of missing the bulk of first class programmes and therefore believes that there are never any good films. To say that there are no good films is, of course, inexcusable prejudice and ignorance.-- Advt.