Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

58 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MALAYAN ROAD-SHOW twenty-odd miles from Kuala Lumpur is the township of Klang and it was here that I saw my first mobile cinema at work in Malaya. The show was to be given in an amusement park which is a common feature of Malayan towns. They are a cross between Coney Island and the G lyndebourne Festival. In connection with a War Exhibition the Public Relations Dept. of Malaya had announced a free cinema show in the park grounds and a space had been provided by the delighted Chinese proprietor whose desire to be helpful was not unnaturally mixed with an eye to business. The show was due to commence at 8 p.m. so at 7.30 I made my way through a dense crowd of people, Indian, Chinese, and Malays, with a sprinkling of British troops, towards the cinema site. By dint of much pushing I at last managed to reach the cinema truck, a three-tonner equipped with a 35 mm. projector built inside the van. Drawn up alongside was a public address van with two enormous speakers mounted on top, and about 100 feet away was the screen lashed to bamboo uprights. At the rear of the screen was the fence enclosing the park, one had to look closely to identify it as a fence because of the incredible number of children draped over it. About 2,000 people were gathered in front of the screen looking solemnly at it and entirely oblivious of the indescribable din going on round them. My heart sank a little at the competition we had to face. Within 20 yards on either side of the enclosure by a Correspondent were thirty or forty sideshows plus a cabaret and a raised platform upon which Malays were dancing the rongeng, a popular Malay dance, accompanied by the appropriate music. Promptly at eight the show started and the opening music of the first film joined the appalling volume of sound. Judging by audience size we were the star attraction but, how much of this was due to the fact that our show was free is difficult to say. Our method of presentation was perhaps not all that the purists of visual education could desire, but our main defence must be that it suited the customer. The film was an M.O.I, short commentated by Leslie Mitchell, whose honeyed voice was received with impassive faces by the audience of Chinese, Malays, Tamils, Sikhs and Eurasians. Closely following Mitchell's commentary was the commentator sitting in the P.A. Van and translating in Malay, the language understood by the great majority of people in Malaya. Although he had a powerful amplifier and the assistance of Mitchell he had absolutely no chance against the locals operating the side-shows who seemed to double their own volume of sound in order to hold their own against us, all done in a most friendly manner. But our trump card was the movie, nothing would shift the audience once the show had started. If they grasped the commentary they gave no sign of it, most of them being too busy explaining to each other what it was all about. I worked my way through the crowd looking at the wonderful variety of faces gazing Halas &Batcheior MEMBERS OF FEDERATION OF DOCUMENTARY FILM UNITS CARTOONS DIAGRAMS MODELS THE FOLLOWING ARTISTS ARE ENGAGED ON PRESENT PRODUCTIONS John Halas, Joy Batchelor, Robert E. Privert, Rosalie Crook, Christine Jollow, Vera Linnecar, Elizabeth Williams, FredaBrown.WalterBeaven, Stanley Jackson, Stella Harvey, William Long, Rosalind Rogora, Richard Horn, Patricia Sizer, Edith Hampton, Victor Bevis, Marianne Zeisel, Brenda Phillips, Sound: Dr. E. H. Meyer. 10a SOHO SQUARE W.l. GER 7681-2 intently at the screen, here a Chinese woman of the poorer class with a sleeping baby on her back, here a bearded Sikh, there a colourfully dressed Malay girl, near the screen a beautifully dressed Chinese in a white suit of European cut with his girl friend dressed in a three-quarter length frock with the slit side which many Chinese girls favour. It struck me then the commentating was superfluous at such a show, some of the films explained themselves while others were obviously beyond their comprehension but still they kept their eyes glued to the screen. The show took an hour and a half and by the end of that time the audience had increased by 50 per cent until a solid mass of humanity was wedged in front of the screen. After the show they all trooped off home and as I rode homewards through the night I determined to learn Malay as soon as possible, if only to find out what they were talking about during the show. It is truly amazing to give a show near a native village which looks incapable of yielding more than a handful of an audience, only to find hundreds assembled bv the time we are ready to start. Maybe they don't understand the commentary, but they are seeing something of the outside world after four years under the Japanese. REVIEWS (continued from page 54) The New Mine. G.B. Instructional for the British Council. Director: Irene Wilson. 18 mins. Is it always the sponsor, or is it sometimes the over-zealous contractor, who insists on gilding the lily? Comrie Colliery in Fife is as up to date as anything in Britain, but, some time after this film describing it had been produced, your reviewer, who also wished to shoot there, was told bluntly by Dr. William Reid. the Managing Director of the colliery group, that he could only do so provided that he promised not to paint the place as perfect. "This is only a start," said Dr. Reid; "it is an experiment, from which we can learn to do much better." But The New Mine finds everything at Comrie (even the ventilation system, which has been obligatory in all pits for many years) the highest pinnacle of achievement. And, curiously enough, in its enthusiasm it fails to make the most of those things of which Comrie is really proud. The surface at Comrie is a model for future mines, but the pretty shots do not attempt an explanation. The underground layout, with main haulage roads driven out level from the shaft-bottom irrespective of the rising and dipping coal-seams, so that coal can be brought back from points near the faces in forty-ton trains behind diesellocomotives, is the most promising single improvement in British mining practice advocated by the Reid Report, but it is not even mentioned in the film. Of course, we see the diesel-locomotives, and the skip-winding system, and the long and shortwall cutters, and the duckbill loaders, and the modern screening and washery plant; but it is all machinery for machinery's sake (usually presented without explanatory long-shot at that), and we are left little the wiser as to its interrelating purpose. Your reviewer's attitude may seem hard on a film, which at the least is positive,