Cinema Quarterly (1933 - 1934)

FILM SOCIETIES OXFORD UNIVERSITY FILM SOCIETY The Society owes a debt of gratitude both for its origin and for its present flourishing condition to its founders, Hugh Carleton Greene and James Gibson. In January 1931 they obtained from the University Proctors permission (hitherto withheld) to start a film society on the condition that they did not attempt to make films themselves. Since that time the Society has continued to hold twelve meetings a year, or four a term. Meetings are held on Sundays, and do much to enliven the deadness of Sunday evenings. A drawback to this is the difficulty of fixing up a programme which shall last exactly two hours ; but since meetings continue during the Trinity term we are perhaps the only Society that does not have a "season," but shows films throughout the year. That this policy is in the circumstances a sound one is proved by the fact that there is very little fluctuation in the Society's strength, which has since the beginning remained pretty steadily in the region of three hundred members. The first, and to those original members who saw it perhaps the most unforgettable programme, was shown in the local Masonic Hall, and consisted of The Seas he 11 and The Clergyman, Chaplin's Fatal Mallet, and The Battleship Potemkin. A promising start, especially in view of the fact that The Seashell aroused such a controversy and remained the subject of such heated conversation during the fortnight intervening between that meeting and the next, that it must have contributed invaluably to the encouragement of hesitating prospective members. They certainly needed encouragement. For a whole term we endured the discomforts of small hard chairs and the inconveniences of a single more or less silent projector accompanied by a gramophone which would keep running down. But the pioneer spirit wanes in Oxford as swiftly as it waxes, and it is doubtful if even the continued 50