FILM OR PLACEMENT SERVICE

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 83, 24 April 1937, Page 11

FILM OR PLACEMENT SERVICE

With the twofold object of bringing home to the general public still further the work being done by the State Placement Service and of extending its sphere of u-sefulness, a talking picture is at present in course of production at the Government studios at Miramar. When completed it will be about 3000ft in length, and will be distributed throughout New Zealand. The film, according to particulars of it given to a reporter, will not be a eollection of pictures havthig very little |relation and joined togetber in slip-shod fashion. Lnstead, the aim is to produce . something well worth while and to present on the screen graphically the difference between work and no work, and the part played by the Placement Service and its officers in finding work for the unemployed, the whole being woven into a story. The idea of the film was conceived by Mr. J.' Lewis, officer in charge of the Wellington Placement Office. It has the approval of the Minister of Labour (the Hon. H. T. Armstrong), who incidentally figures in the film, and the direction is in charge of Mr. Lewus, one who knows life and knows men, and whose enthusiasm for the job he has been given to do as Placement Officer in Wellington is by now widely known in that city. The equipment at the Government studios was added to for the purpose of the picture, which, it is hoped, wnll be complete very shortly. 1 The film is to open on a dramatic out-of-work note with appropriate screen and sound elfects, and then there will be shown an artisan at work at a lathe. From him will come something of what work means to a mah, and this will lead up to some anteresting shots of various phase3 of industrial and commercial activity in everydav life. Men will be seen at work in factories, workshops, and so on. This will be followed by a little scene in the office of the Minister of Labour, with whom will be shown the secretary of the Labour Defartment (Mr. J. S. Hunter) and the Director of the Employment Division (Mr. A. J. Ridler). At this podnt the audience will be told something of the Placement Service, and the scene will conclude with an invitation by tbe Minister to the audience to go with him and witness on the screen what the servuce does. From this point on the story will deal with the experiences of a man of about 35 who has been out of work for some time, who is unable to get any job, and who, at the 'suggestion of one of his fellows who has just succeeded in getting a job at £i a week through the same source, advises him to go along to the Placement Office. The procedure adopted when a man enrols will be shown and also the courtesy and sympathetdc treatment he is accorded

by the staff, as well as the change in his whole outlook and that of his wife when, through the service, he obtains a job. The th(^ne lcnds itself to an interesting production and it is hoped that the picture wtill be the means of showing the public something of the work that is being done and of making the service still better known with a correspondingly increased measure of support from all. who are able to assist, particularly those able to provude some employment for their less fortunate fellows. N In addition to other workers engaged in various forms of industrial aetivity, there are shots of the men at the railway workshops, including tbe men at a community stng staged by them, and led by the famous Scottish comedian, Sir Harry Lauder,