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telligent. I hope that on a future occasion, a committee shall not ask the different nations to send whatever they please, but that an approach will be made direct to the production firms for definite films. Moreover, we would prefer to see ten films rather than sixty-six.
European production appears to be most hopeful when it is not under the control of the commercially-minded who regard film-making merely as a method of making money. Such small countries as Czechoslovakia and Holland often provide the best examples of independent and courageous artistic production.
There is nothing to prevent anyone having a thousand films shown in the garden of a grand hotel, without any significance attached to the selection, the exhibition intended to provide only a pleasant pastime. But it is a different matter when such a series of performances is described as an International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art. Film art is not a definition to be treated lightly. The directors whose work is presented — and the organizers of the Exhibition themselves — should be people who already have some standing in the sphere of film art, or whose work at the Exhibition is going to reveal their worthiness. The programmes might be arranged to reflect aspects of the development of the film : comparisons for example, between primitive and contemporary films, obtained by short and representative excerpts. Similarly, the outstanding film artists ought not to be forgotten and programmes could be devoted to the story of Pabst's genius or of Mamoulian's cleverness, or to the career of any other prominent director. Of the Going Hollywood type of film, ten yards of celluloid could be selected to show what the film is not to be.
The responsibility of the organizers grows when they publicize the Exhibition and attract many people. Under such conditions, the audience will include not only students of the cinema but a large percentage who are cinematographically uneducated. The character of the exhibition is particularly to be regretted when, as at present, education in film matters is spreading. That education at present is not at all complete, as was shown at the Lido during the performace of Rutten's Dood Water (Holland), but undoubtedly people are developing their film taste, are able to distinguish the work of the major directors and are becoming familiar with film technicalities. It is unfortunate that lovers of good cinema should have been deceived by an exhibition so pompously announced and should have been again confronted with the invasion of industry into art when they thought that, for once, they could have shed their worries on this score and left them at the entrance of the Hotel Excelsior like a wet umbrella.
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