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THE NATIONAL FILM LIBRARY
By Ernest Lindgren {Curator of the Library)
Many who have followed Dr. Manvell through this survey will be impressed with the power of the cinema as a social force and with the need to improve the quality of film production; but they will equally be impressed by the highly complex and powerful organisation of the cinema industry, and may well wonder whether there is anything ordinary people can do within the realm of practical politics to achieve this end.
The only effective solution is a long-term one: to educate film audiences. The man who pays his shilling at the box-office is the one who can order any tune he wants from the apparently all-powerful pipers of the film industry — if only there are enough of him. People, and especially young people, must be shown that intelligent and informed criticism can increase their delight in film going; it can make the films they see, not so much the short-lived opiate of the escapist, as works to be selected, enjoyed, discussed, remembered, and in some cases to be seen again.
The ripples stirred by the pioneer work of the film societies have spread in ever-widening circles until now even teachers and administrators of education, whose attitude in the past has generally been one of academic aloofness, are beginning to show a lively interest. The. claims of film appreciation as a new subject, at least in the fields of continued and adult education, are beginning to be heard. The British Film Institute is anxious to encourage film appreciation ; it is the function of the National Film Library to provide material for its study.
Primarily, the purpose of the Library is to preserve films and film records of historical value. Because celluloid film and its thin coating of photographic emulsion are, on any longterm view, extremely fragile, the originals in the Library cannot be projected on to the screen; for this purpose copies have to be made. This means that by an unfortunate necessity
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