Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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126 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER THE FIRST OF A SERIES ON FILM FACILITIES IN THE PROVINCES No 1— MANCHESTER By MERVYN REEVES Manchester enjoys something of reputation in cultural matters, notably music and the drama. This is a brief account of what it is doing for the art which is little older than its outer suburbs. The Kinematograph Year Book lists 133 cinemas in Manchester and its contiguous boroughs, Salfoid and Stretford. This figure must suffice — although one notices the omission of at least two 'palaces' where important films may be caught on the point of deserting the city's repertoire. Of the 133, twenty-four are owned by the three main circuits, and a number of the remainder by smaller locally-owned circuits. Total seating capacity may be estimated at 100,000, roughly one seat for every ten persons. Birmingham and Merseyside, two areas with comparable populations, are recorded as having 102 and 106 cinemas respectively, which suggests a relatively heavy concentration in Manchester. We certainly feel no shortage of the conventional type of picture house ; the lack is one of enterprise in programme policy. No Stravinsky! As elsewhere, the routine commercial feature makes its much-heralded tour of the city's cinemas, except for occasional commercial discords like the early Orson Welles films, which sneaked away; nor were we allowed to see the Stravinsky sequence in Fantasia ! Apart from the central circuit cinemas and their suburban satellites, double-feature programmes are uncommon. Most of the suburban cinemas run a single feature and 'full supporting programme' — the news and one or two shorts. The last are often chosen as a contribution to neither quota nor culture. In fact, it seems, they are frequently not deliberately chosen at all but simply thrown in as a prelude to the feature. And although the results are rarely downright offensive, it is surprising that the opportunity to practise the art of programme building and demonstrate the versatility of the film medium, should be so widely ignored. The banality of supporting programmes is not, of course, peculiar to Manchester, but one could have hoped that the city's one specialized cinema would bear fruit elsewhere in the locality. For the 'Tatler Theatre', over many years, has exhibited almost every factual film of merit, providing the subject matter has had a reasonably wide appeal. Only one type of film, I'm told, is barred — the ones which deem it necessary to underline, verbally, the moral of a film, catch you by the cars, and adopt a coercive attitude! Local restrictions This enterprise apart, we have no cinema which can justly be called progressive. To date, there are no regular showings of Continental films and no repertory cinemas worthy of the name. Nowhere, that is, where the work of people like Reed, Donskoi, Carne, Ford, Rotha, Eldridge — and your favourite comedian — is consistently given precedence over that of the industry's less talented personalities. So far, commerce has not seen fit to fulfil this need ; but it is clearly a provision of the greatest educational and cultural importance and, incidentally, an essential complement to the work of the Arts Council in other fields. We hope that the City Corporation may feel its responsibilities in the matter. Although quick to use the film as a means of encouraging civic consciousness (they commissioned Rotha's A City Speaks), the Corporation has been more timid in its attitude towards the wider potentialities of films in the community. There was, for example, the regrettable and unprecedented restriction imposed last year upon the exhibition of all 35-mm films, and any 16-mm films of more than 2,400 ft., in the Corporation's own Central Library Theatre. Thus the civic film itself is excluded ; and we can only hope that this measure will prove to be an isolated concession to those who persist in estimating cinema exclusively by to-day's box-office returns. As for the feared competition which inspired the restriction — the theatre holds less than one-half of one per cent of the city's total population. Film Societies The locality has been fortunate in the work of its voluntary societies. The oldest of these is the Manchester and Salford Film Society, successor to the Salford Workers' Film Society, founded in 1930. As England's first exhibiting society it was inadvertently assisted by the banning of St<>rm Over Asia early in its career, and over a period of seventeen years it has shown 500 noteworthy films. Membership now stands at 450, and its activities include lectures and discussions in addition to standard film shows held on Sunday afternoons in the winter months. Manchester owes a lot to this pioneering Society and particularly to Reg Cordwell, its secretary for many years. The Manchester Film Institute Society, inaugurated in 1934, has done similar work. For a period during the war it joined forces with the Manchester and Salford Society, both resuming separate operations in 1943. At that time the Film Institute Society had 124 members; it now has 1,150 and holds two performances of each monthly programme during the winter season, on a week-night —thanks to a sympathetic cinema manager. Prior to the war it had a flourishing schools group, about to be revived, and during recent years it has co-operated with the ExtraMural Department of Manchester University in arranging a number of lectures on various aspects of the cinema. These two societies between them nave endeavoured to give every available film of artistic, social, or experimental interest at least one show ing in Manchester, with frequent revivals of the established classics. They are entitled to much of the credit for the reported proposal to devote one of the principal commercial cinemas in the city to Continental films. Scientific Film Society The most recently formed organization is the Manchester Scientific Film Society, dating from 1945. Rapid progress has been made and the membership is now 600. Half are school members for whom special films are provided. Demand for attendance at the junior section is so great that only a small proportion can be accommodated at present, and the Society is proposing to tour the programmes next season in order to reach the wider audience. Programmes lasting two hours (1£ hours for the juniors) have hitherto consisted of an assortment of scientific films, with informed commentary upon the subject-matter of at least one film. The success of these commentaries suggests that it will shortly be possible to devote a whole programme to one theme, and use the film increasingly as a means of provoking discussion. Production On the amateur production side we have the Manchester Film Society, which suspended activity during the war after 16 years of excellent work ; its film Miracles Still Happen (1935), commemorating the centenary of the Manchester Children's Hospital, was the first amateur 35-mm sound film. Film and Education Finally there are the scholastic bodies, the Teachers' Screen Circle, and a number of school visual aid groups; the latter are spreading rapidly, as are film societies, throughout South Lancashire. The prolificacy of film groups here is eloquent enough. It is no longer simply a question of stimulating an interest in film but one of Supplying the many growing points with worthy material and authoritative guidance. Now that public education in this country is likely to be the most rewarding form of security in the atomic age. it is urgent that the film should make its full contribution — inside and outside the commercial cinema. Some would like to believe that, in Manchester, with the co-operation of the various film societies, and adult education bodies, the valuable assistance of the COI Regional film Office, and — dare one hope— the sympathetic car of the Hade, we might be able to set the pace for this task, flic area is sufficiently compact to avoid dissipation of effort and yet populous and varied enough to constitute a fair test of the power which is believed to lie in visual education.