BRITISH FILMS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19787, 10 March 1927, Page 9

BRITISH FILMS

AN APPEAL TO BRITONS IMPORTANCE OF THE CINEMA. In support of their appeal for funds for the work of the Empire Film Institute, Lord Ask with. Lord Danesfort. Sir Charles Oman, Sir Johnston ForbesRobertson, and Sir Owen Seaman have issued the following announcement through the press:— The Imperial Conference has left behind it many reports dealing with matters of high importance. Tn our opinion that on Empire films is not the least important of them, and provides much food for thought. This report emphasises a fact on which we have been laying much stress during the past year, and sets it forth in terms even stronger than those which we have used. The kincma and the film have become in the present generation the most powerful instruments for educational, social, political, and national propaganda that the world has ever known. They certainly have the opportunity of shaping the ideas of untold millions. School teaching, plays, political orations, and the sermons of the preacher, great as the scope of their influence may be, appeal to smaller and more specialised audiences. This fact being granted, the report expressed the most serious concern that, throughout the British Empire, the large majority of films which are at present exhibited are of alien origin. Many of these films almost invariably take for granted social and moral ideals and manners of though which are not identical with our own. while some of them even purport to represent British life, and produce (intentionally or unintentionally) an unhappy rendering of it which does harm outside as well as inside the Empire. Purpose of the Institute. The British Empire Film Institute was inaugurated last year for the very purpose of attempting to remedy this regrettable state of :|(fairs on which the report lays stress. Its object was to originate, organise, and maintain by all legitimate means interest in British films portraying the life, history, and ideals of our people within and beyond the high seas. The Institute endorses most heartily the conclusion of the re port —namely, that it is most desirable that we should produce within the Empire more films, both of sound educational merit and of a character attractive to the general public, and that their exhibition throughout the world should be on a vastly increased scale. It will carry out its constructive policy by disseminating, through a Central Bureau, information relating to British films throughout-the Empire, by creating a healthy public opinion, through conferences and the press, on the subject of British films, by establishing a Film Library, by conferring awards of merit for films of distinctive value, and by issuing and distributing an official journal. Much remains to be done in the way of propaganda destined to stimulate the production of good British films. 1 his Institute gives all those, in whom British Imperial sentiment is strong an opportunity of rendering articulate their desire for more films of the right sort, and its objects have already received the commendation and good wishes of His Majesty the King and of the Prime Minister.