FILMS IN DEMAND

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21793, 7 May 1934, Page 7

FILMS IN DEMAND

ENGLISH IDEA POPULAR CATERING IFOR THE EMPIRE A desire to give the countries of the British Empire tho English type of film they demand and the growing popularity of the English idea with American audiences were discussed by Mr. Ralph Doyle, of Sydney, managing director of K.K.O. Radio Pictures in Australia and New Zealand, who passed through Auckland by the Monterey on Saturday. Mr. Doyle is visiting America to-attend the annual sales convention of his organisation. Prior to the convention, said Mr. Doyle, representatives of the organisation throughout the British Empire would confer with the studio executives with a view to giving Empire countries a greater voice in stating what pictures and stories were most suitable to the tastes of their public. This would be the first conference of its kind held, and it showed an. earnest desire to cater more than in the past for British audiences.

This action was inspired by the great importance of the market in the British Isles and of the Australian and New Zealand markets, coupled with the great strides in English film production and the inroads which English pictures were making in American markets abroad. English playwrights wrote very good plays. The sales of their work in America were very large, particularly among tho broader-minded of the American people. "Tho English idea is growing more popular in America," said Mr. Doyle, "and this will solve the difficulties of rigid selection which I have exercised in the past, so as to make available in Australia and New Zealand films which will not. offend tho taste of the public." Mr. Doyle said an indication that his organisation did not wish to foist unwanted films on its Birtisli public was shown in its new productions for fearly release, in which the services of prominent British playwrights and actors had been engaged. It was a remarkable thing that pictures of this type were proving more and more successful in the United States, but it was the films themselves which had educated the American public to a fill, appreciation of them. Television, ho believed, was destined to play an important part as an ally of the films. The Radio Corporation of America, with which his company was affiliated, had brought television to a pitch where it had been possible to transmit, a film'screening over a radius of 60 miles. This means that one could sit at home, and watch and hear a film that w*as being screened in a theatre. Part of his mission was to thoroughly investigate the progress in this diiection, with a view to the possibility of introducing it to Australia and New Zealaud.