The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

104 CINE TECHNICIAN July 1956 PARIS STOCKTAKING A T a conference in Paris through■^ out the week of May 13th-20th, some seventy film makers from twenty-five countries took stock of the current situation and future possibilities of the cinema. The meeting was derived from discussions at the Cannes Film Festival of 1955 and was finally set for the week following the Festival of '56, thereby ensuring the participation of foreigners who took part in the Festival. The general discussions of the conference came under three headings: National Cinema, Cultural Exchanges and Freedom of Expression. After preliminaries, the members split up into groups which detailed the reactions to the subjects discussed in public session and listed the conclusions, printed below. 3,000 Enthusiasts The whole event aroused much publicity in the press and on radio and television, for which I myself did two articles, three ' steam ' radio recordings and one TV newsreel. There was also a personal appearance of the visitors at a film show organised by the cine-clubs before some three thousand film enthusiasts in the gigantic Palais de Chaillot, at which we were loaded with flowers, bottles of scent and cigarette lighters the size of truncheons, by charming players like Gaby Morlay and Daniel Gelin. On the move and on the talk for fourteen hours a day, we were constantly refuelled with chicken and champagne. Michael Wilson, the writer, showed us Salt of the Earth, Paul Strand introduced Native Land, his unforgettable film, strong in subject and intensely alive in treatment; the technicians of Brazil had clubbed together to send the young director Pereira dos Santos with his feature film Rio !t0 Degrees, made on a shoestring (£5,000), a touching web of realistic stories frowned on by the local authorities. This was one issue hotly discussed at the conference: the blind snobbery in official circles, particularly in Italy and Brazil, against the neo-realist presentation of poverty in these countries: surely it is just these lilms which have roused sympathy and understanding for these peoples wherever the films have been seen ? Who else were there ? Alazraki flew in straight from a Mexican studio. There were Marcel Pagnol, Abel Gance, Marcel l'Herbier (France). Cacoyannis (Greece), Cavalcanti, Joris Ivens (Holland), Henri Storck (Belgium), Vassiliev and Yutkevitch (U.S.S.R.), Zavattini (Italy), Preston Sturges, Otto Preminger, Jules Dassin (U.S.A.). There were representatives of China, Bulgaria, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Iran, Germany, Hungary. It is impossible to name them all. By Thorold Dickinson Supported by the French Centre of Cinematography, Unifrance, the trade unions and cine-clubs, the conference was organised by the French Association of Film Authors, opposite number of our Screenwriters' Association; both affiliated to the International Federation of Film Authors. But to the French and Italians, as Louis Chavance explained at an early session, the phrase Film Author corresponds to our phrase Film Maker: in both France and Italy it comprises writers, directors and music composers, all of whom are considered to share the creative responsibility for a film. He pointed out that a bill is under consideration in the French Parliament, one of whose provisions will accord to Film Authors the right to a share in the boxoffice receipts in France, a right which already exists in most countries for playwrights and composers of music. It seemed appropriate, then, to aim at standardising this concept in as many countries as possible, so that each association of film authors could be empowered to act for the rest nationally and internationally. Mr. Chavance quoted the case of foreign 90-minute television films, dubbed into French, earning the equivalent of £100 per performance for their ' authors ' over and above the production company's fee, It was refreshing to hear discussed in public and private, in sessions and over meals, the international aspects of cinema, often with direct and frank revelation of conditions and trends in areas remote from one's normal field of operations. Some at first seemed anxious to confine discussion to the economic, commercial and political problems of production, but others among us insisted that it is useless to fight for freedom of expression if we do not cultivate the audience and attract to the cinema that enormous proportion of the population that deserts the cinema after the average age of twenty-five years. Censorship Excesses We heard direct evidence of excesses of censorship, the swamping of screens by foreign product, copyright in literary works being bought up and left unused by foreign interests — Ferenc Molnar and Selma Lagerlof, for example, none of whose works are available for production in their countries of origin. Difference in the meaning of words like democracy and in attitudes to police and censors led to misunderstandings which had to be clarified. Bad accents in French and misuse of French roused occasional duststorms. Set speeches from the East, read in the original language and in translation, induced some massive doodling among the listeners. Cliches belittling the words that expressed them poured out images of promised lands attained, where all the freedoms flourish. The Westerns were much franker. But the spirit was right and healthy in the main, and an occasional clap of laughter acted like rain on a thickened atmosphere. All who participated owe a strong debt of gratitude to the men and women who steered the conference from generalisations around the bla-bla and the irrelevant to its conclusions, above all to the tact and energy of Jean-Paul le Chanois and his cheerful assistant, Pierre Biro. The work is not finished. Indeed it has only just begun. There will be future conferences, interchange of information through a quarterly bulletin, an annual display of films, personal contact between film makers in need of advice and in