EDUCATIONAL FILMS

Taranaki Daily News, 27 May 1931, Page 9

EDUCATIONAL FILMS

NO MARKET IN BRITAIN. "Thousands of educational films, covering almost the whole field of instruction, are rotting in Wardour Street cellars because no theatre or school use can be. found for them,” says the London Daily Telegraph. Cinema owners say that the public does not like educational films, and all efforts to find a regular theatre outlet for them were practically killed by the “quota” Act,' which does not allow educational films to rank for quota purposes. “In Germany the cineriia owner who shows educational films is allowed a substantial rebate of entertainment tax,” the Telegraph adds. “America shows them in thousands of theatres, schpols, colleges and universities, and great cinema corporations deal in nothing else. In Britain there is practically no market for them.

“Is it consistent that there should be a public demand for improvement in the type of film shown to children and that, at the same time, no effort should be made to show to children the films which they should see? The difficulty, apart from the quota Act, as far as cinema theatrps are concerned, is in the word ‘education.’ The cinema world hag made up its mind that between the word ‘education’ and the word ‘entertainment’ there is a gulf that it is all but impossible to bridge, but efforts are being made to bridge it by taking the printed letterpress out of sortie educational films and fitting them with a spoken explanation. This certainly improves their entertainment quality by giving them a touch of personal intimacy, but it yet remains to be seen whether the public will favour such L •’ndfj of talk and instruction.”