The Cine Technician (1938-1939)

THE CINE-TECHNICIAN The Journal of The Association of Cine-Technicians Editorial and Publishing Office: 145, WARDOUR STREET, LONDON, W.l. Telephone: GERRARD 2366. Advertisement Office: 5 and 6, RED LION SQUARE, LONDON, W.C. 1 . Telephone: HOLBORN 4972. Volume Four: Number Nineteen JANUARY — FEBRUARY, 1939 Price Ninepence THIS FREEDOM An Enquiry into Film Censorship by GEORGE H. ELVIN (In this provocative article the General Secretary of the Association of Cine-Technicians raises points about film censorship which vitally affect the growth, power and prestige of the film industry. What are your views! — Editors) WHEN nearly three years ago technicians sawfit to reply to a statement of Lord Tyrrell's, A.C.T. was told by some of the trade and lay press to mind its own business. Perhaps "The Relief of Lucknow" incident will convince those critics that censorship is very much the concern of technicians, a large number of whom were deprived of their Xmas dinner through the latest action of the British Board of Film Censors. But apart from industrial reactions we cannot agree that those who make films should not be permitted to express an opinion on what is allowed to go into and what is cut out from film productions. There are other matters, too, tied up with freedom in the film industry of which the Twentieth-Century Fox — Film Renter controversy is a recent example. To return to Lord Tyrrell. He said at the C.E.A. Conference in 1936 that nothing would be more calculated to arouse the passions of the British public than the introduction on the screen of subjects dealing with religious or political controversy. A.C.T. summed up its attitude in a resolution taking grave exception to Lord Tyrrell's views and stating that while holding "no brief for any particular political belief whatsoever, it must sternly resist any tendency to deprive those working in the field of cinematography of the right which they should enjoy as British citizens, the right of expression in their chosen field of any view not inconsistent with the law. The attempt to limit the function of cinematography exclusively to 'entertainment' is outside the province and duties of censorship ; if successful, it will establish the cinema, per sc. as inferior in social value to literature and the other arts, and thereby degrade the status of technicians who devote their lives to it. The elimination from cinematograph subject material of every controversial question deprives the cinema of the possibility of playing any useful part in the life of the nation, and will have the effect of holding it at that nickelodeon level from which the skill of generations of technicians has raised it to the heights of an art unlimited in potentiality. The underlying assumption that British audiences arc incapable of witnessing material with "which they disagree without riot is, further, an insult to the British people which, as citizens, the Council (of the A.C.T.) must strongly repudiate." FUNCTION OF THE CENSOR The British Board ot Film Censors is not an official body, i.e.. it is neither set up nor directly controlled by the Government. It is appointed by the exhibiting side Lord Tyrell, The Film Censor