BRITISH FILM QUOTAS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18466, 3 August 1934, Page 11

BRITISH FILM QUOTAS

OPPOSED BY EXHIBITORS UNDESIRABLE RESULTS (Per Pross Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. Mr. Gccil Mason, general manager of Greater Australasian Films, who arrived from Sydney by the Wanganella, said that the feeling among picture exhibitors in England on tiie question of a quota requiring the inclusion of British productions in programmes was that it was a distinct handicap'. There was an agitation among British exhibitors, he said, to have the quota abolished, and he had been informed that several exhibitors were prepared to go to the length of ignoring the restriction. even though fines would be inevitable if they took that course. He said the present position had been brought about by the ease with which cheap and inferior British pictures could he produced to comply with the quota provision. It- was felt by exhibitors that the quota had served its purpose, which had been to nurse the .British motion picture industry in its infancy. If the quota, were, abolished, British pictures would more than hold their own.

He also said that Australian pictures had a great appeal for Australian audiences at present, hut it might be that they were riding on the crest of a wave similar to that- on which British pictures had cQ.mcJnto prominence.