“KNOW YOUR OWN COUNTRY” FIRST!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 218, 3 December 1927, Page 23 (Supplement)

“KNOW YOUR OWN COUNTRY” FIRST!

DIFFICULTY WITH SERIES PRODUCERS NOT KEEN The story of the difficulties under which the film series, “Know Your Own Country,” was distributed, was related to the Australian Film Commission by Edgar Norman Robinson, officer-in-charge of oubUcily, at the Development and Migration Commission. Tho originators of the series, through the department, he said, wrote to seven distributing firms throughout Australia after it was apparent that the films would be popular asking upon what terms they could be shown. Some of the firms said that they could do nothing, because the public would not like them, but one firm, the Famous Players Lasky Corporation, replied that they could secure between 400 and 600 theatres willing to pay 10 guineas a theatre a year for the screening of the films. The department was anxious for the release Of the films, and accepted the terms, and a contract was made. The distributors, however, were not as successful as they had hoped, and in the first two years secured only 300 theatres. In the third year, Mr. Hicks wrote, saying that he preferred not to handle them any longer as the public was losing interest in them. MODIFIED CONTRACT “I recommended to my chief,” said Mr. Robinson, “that the films should be further shown in Australia, and, in consequence, the contract was modified, by which bigger theatres paid 10 guineas, and the smaller five guineas a year.” Mr. Marks, M.H.R.: Is Mr. Hicks still of the opinion that the public doesn’t want them? —Yes; I can’t understand it. Mr. Marks; We have been 14,000 miles over Australia, and it seems to us that the public does want them. He did not know how the films could be brought to the notice of all the showmen. The cost of the films was balanced by the sum received from the theatres. They were primarily taken for Australia House to encourage migration. Six copies were sent there every week, and were shown.