VOLUNTARY FILM QUOTA

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 223, 20 September 1928, Page 9

VOLUNTARY FILM QUOTA

EXHIBITORS SATISFIED. A WORKABLE MEASURE. FAIR PROPORTION OF BRITISH PICTURES. (By Telegraph—Special to "Star.") WELLINGTON, this day. Interviewed on the subject of the Government's Cinematograph Films Bill and its amendments, Mr. J. Robertson, Dominion secretary of the New Zealand Motion Picture Exhibitors' Association, said that while exhibitors did not welcome Government interference in business they had recognised some time ago that the aim of the Government was legitimate and reasonable, and from a national point of view, desirable. The Exhibitors Association from the outset associated itself with those departmental officers in charge of the bill, and now it could fairly be claimed that the amended bill, with all harsh conditions cut out, is the result of this policy. It was only when they could see that a supply of good British films was available for the next few years that it became possible to offer to carry out the quota voluntarily. Mr. Robertson is confident that there is now no longer any fear that the British film industry will not be able to supply a sufficiency of right quality of British moving pictures at a right price for the next few years at any rate. If so, one of the principal difficulties contemplated in the report of the Australian Royal Commission on Moving Pictures would be removed. It was possible that the fixing of a voluntary (in lieu of a compulsory) quota would be followed by the production and screening of British films in a greater and perhaps a considerably greater, proportion than the minimum percentages fixed in the quota schedule of the Cinematograph Films Bill. Another point emphasised by Mr. Robertson was that the bill as amended by the House of Bepresentatives had been deprived of some of the complicated provisions that caused exhibitors to rather dread its working. For instance, amendments that confined the quota to films of 3000 feet or more had got rid of a good deal of the foot-age-calculation "that under the original bill would have worried small exhibitors. In short, the amendments have greatly simplified the machinery in this respect • and will facilitate the operation of the voluntary quota.