The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

September, 1953 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 121 An A.C.T. View by the General Secretary A.C.T.9 The Americans^ and TV TALKS for the revision of the Anglo-American Film Agreement are to commence in Washington on 22nd September and presumably, if precedent is followed, what is decided then will stay in operation for a year. Members will know that it is this agreement which controls the amount of their earnings which American companies are allowed to take out of Britain and, therefore, indirectly controls the amount to be spent in production here. It is wrong to assume that the Agreement is in any sense a freezing one as the public has been led to believe, because in fact all the British earnings of the American companies are under one channel or another transmitted to America. An authoritative source says that of their last year's earnings a little over half a million pounds remains unremitted or not expended in one of the permitted ways. At this year's A.C.T. Annual General Meeting quite a lot was said about the effect of the Agreement on the workings of the Quota Act and the Eady Plan. Films made by American companies in Britain draw Eady levy, although, clearly, this fund was established to benefit native British production. Also, because of pledges given by the Government during negotiations on the AngloAmerican Film Agreement, the Government is loath to operate in accordance with its traditional policy on such matters as the employment of foreign technicians. This all means that whilst A.C.T. members and others have the benefit of a certain amount of limited employment by American companies, genuine British film production has to pay a heavy price in exchange. Most of the key creative grades, including Director, Producer, and Scriptwriter, are American, as also are a number of the stars. There have even been attempts, which only strong trade union action has prevented, to make films which would qualify as British under the Quota Act but which would only employ a handful of those who normally work in our industry. It is surprising how attached American film producers can become to Canada, Africa, Australia and other parts of the British Commonwealth, when loopholes are required to evade the intention of the Cinematograph Films Act. These and many other points were stressed by our recent delegation to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. His Department's representatives can put some of them right in the course of revision of the Anglo-American Film Agreement. In addition we trust they will make clear that no longer will the Board of Trade exert pressure in the appropriate quarters in support of the issuing of labour permits to individuals who, on the grounds of merit and other legitimate considerations, should not be granted them. These are in one sense the narrow issues, although they are all important to A.C.T. On the wider issue, there is no reason at all why with the continuing dollar difficulties confronting the country we should continue to spend so much on importing foreign films when we have an industry in this country so competent to do the job. Surely during the forthcoming negotiations a start can be made towards limiting the number of American films imported so that as speedily as possibly the quota position will be reversed so that we shall make films to our full capacity in this country and merely import sufficient American and other foreign films to make up the total number necessary to fill British screens. THE latest stage in the squabble between films -* and television is the instruction of the C.E.A. to its members to refuse to book World Without End because it has been shown on television. It is about time the C.E.A. realised that they cannot continue to behave like this. There is bound to be competition between films and television and people concerned with the progress of both should welcome such competition as an incentive to further effort. Black-balling and black-mailing seems to us a poor alternative to the necessity to move with the times. The Coronation showed how television and films can be a spur to each other. The film industry will never make progress either in artistic or financial terms if it merely seeks to keep back the competition from television by threatening to use its power to keep material off the screens. I do not know whether World Without End is a bad film or a good one as I have not seen it. If it is a bad one both the television and film-going audiences will make their own assessments and will neither look in nor pay to go and see it, if it is a good one then surely cinemas can cash in on the fact that this is the first film to have a television premiere. One thing is certain, television has come to stay just as firmly as films came to stay some fifty years ago. A.C.T. wants collaboration and cooperation between the two media, and we are sure that all sensible people will endorse such an approach. CINE TECHNICIAN is published monthly, price 6d. You can get twelve issues for 8/6d. post free Make sure of your copy by becom ing a subscriber: our July and August issues were sold out!