THE KINEMA AND EDUCATION

Hokitika Guardian, 28 August 1930, Page 7

THE KINEMA AND EDUCATION

(Otago Times.)

The kineina as an educational factor has been receiving a good deal of attention at the Women’s Pan-Pacific Conference at Honolulu. It has also been the subject of a report issueo

this week by the Colonial Filins Committee set up by the Colonial Office last year to examine the arrangements existing for the supply and censorship of films for public exhibition in colonies, protectorates and mandated territories, and consider bow these arrangements could be improved. The recent Colonial 'Conference emphasised the importance of the use of films in education, especially in the case of primitive peoples, and lor adults as well as children. __ The subject is a big one. The educational possibilities of the kineina seem at present t>o be much more emphasised in neglect than in observance. It is easy to understand the need for British enterprise in an endeavour to combat the existing dominance of foreign films in British colonics It is an anomaly that in vast areas of British territory, in tropical Africa for example, the people should derive their impressions of the outside world from foreign films. Trade, it has been said, follows the films, and there is much force in the statement, for the film is a great advertising agent. “Our colonies have fifty millions of native people whose minds are being cultivated by foreign films to the grave detriment of English prestige and business.” So declared Sir James Parr recently in one of his effective utterances in the Empire's cause, and it is hoped that, as he. urged, the impending Imperial Conference will give consideration to the question of Empire co-operation for the retrieval of a position which, through the existing preponderance' of foreign films, is detrimental to the best interests of the British Common wen Ith. The Colonial Films Committee has pointed to the danger of a demoralising type of film, but has recognised that the remedy must lie chiefly in the positive policy of fostering British film enterprise and the supply of films of a desirable kind. Concerning the educational aspect of the kinema the same conclusion can be given a far wider application. There is much room for consideration of what the kinema is accomplishing as an educational factor in this or any other part of the Empire. That it is doing little enough in that way in a desirable direction most thinking people will agree. “Education by Hollywood” is written broad across the screen.

Tile picture-loving public' does not of course, waiit to be educated, It wants to be entertained find emotionally fed and thrilled. The supply corresponds in its genral character, it will be suggested, with the demand. That is one of the reasons why a censorship is needed. The chief film censor in the Commonwealth is reported as saying that the problem of the censor is the problem of sex. If so, the problem is an old one in a new guise. The same official is credited with observing. “Misguided enthusiasts would ban the picture altogether. "I fctelieve they can be made a powerful influence for good in the community and in education.” Such a pronouncement is tar rroni novel. People seem to have been saying that about film productions from the very beginning, and no doubt it is perfectly true. But the euucational influence in question is still unfortunately very much under eclipse, and coneering the psychological effect of the kinema. upon the community a great deal could be said and much surmised.

Fittingly recalled may be Dean Inge’s words at a recent meeting in the Mansion House in support of the British Empire Films Institute,,— “We ought to remember that we haveinherited a very glorious and magnificent Empire, and wo do want to educate our own people and fellowcitizens in an appreciation of how much there is of interest and of power in India, the dominions, and the Empire generally: in this way the film industry might have a very valuable patriotic and educative effect.” Surely the average New Zealander should not be content with—or be devoid of sufficient reflective capacity to appreciate that there is something amiss in—a picture theatre programme in his own city that presents throughout its varied course no vestige whatever of the colour of anything British unless it he a mechanised version of our national an the mi This represents a state of affairs to be deplored, however much room there may be for admiration of American film enterprise. Truly there are many aspects of the question of the kinema ns an educational influence.