Cinema (Hollywood) (1947)

LITTLE CINEMA Tip British Film Society Movement By ROGER MANVELL IT was recognized over twenty years ago that the film was more than a medium for easy popular entertainment. As soon as distinguished artists like Griffith, Chaplin, Von Stroheim, Wegener, Lang, Eisenstein, and Pudovkin, and the more important members of the French avant-garde began to produce a fairly continous flow of films deserving serious study and criticism, the literature of the cinema commenced — (for example, the British publication in Switzerland called Close-Up) — and people already fascinated by the possibilities of the new art gathered together to exhibit for themselves those films which for various reasons could not find an outlet in the commercial cinemas. In this way, the Film Society movement was born. (I use the term Film Society for the large private audience meeting for the most part in a cinema, and the term Film Club for the smaller, more informal, group using 16mm. apparatus to project films for the most part in their own premises.) In England, it began when the London Film Society gave a lead to the country as a whole as early as 192 J, with a series of private exhibitions to its members in the New Gallery Cinema. It was later followed by the development of Film Societies all over Britain, most of them founded during the period 1929 to 1935. The motives of these various societies differed considerably, and the date of their wider development is signifi cant. From 1919 to 1928, the silent cinema was international. I remember a large new Cinema in an industrial provincial town in England opening for the first time to the public with Fritz Lang's film Metropolis. With the coming of sound, virtually all films shown on British screens were American, augmented by a gradually increasing number of mainly bad English films. The Film Society movement became a national attempt to keep informed about the Continental cinema. It was supported, both in London and the provinces, by the intelligentsia, and it often suffered from tendencies to be over-aesthetic in purpose and to worship the more extreme forms of cinematic experiment. At its best, however, it did represent a permanent desire by intelligent people throughout the country to subsidize the private regular showing of programmes of foreign-language films supported by the work of the British documentary units, which were glad to have this outlet for their films, which were rarely wanted by the commercial exhibitor. In the years preceding the war, about fifty film societies were in operation, meeting usually once a month in cinemas especially hired for the purpose, or in private premises equipped with 3 5 mm. apparatus. In addition to these audiences, innumerable small clubs using 16mm. projectors were developing elsewhere, linked usually with schools, clubs, societies, churches, and other social and educational organizations. Many of the film classics of the silent period were available on both 16mm. and 9.5mm., and most British documentary films were reduced to 16mm. and available free of charge. To give a first-class film-show of silent and sound films was a very inexpensive undertaking. The war, with all its dangers, dislocations and pre-occupations, did not destroy the film society movement. On sub-standard size film, it vastly increased as part of wartime welfare and recreation. Some, but not all, of the larger societies, including the London Film Society, were, however, forced to give up their work. Since the war, RITUAL IN TRANSFICURED TIME by Maya Deren, a leader in the post-war experimental film movement. AUGUST, 1947 21