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DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION
Limitation of the Circulation Time of a Film
A him may be very good, but after five years it has to disappear from general consumption. So wills the Moloch film industry. And it accomplishes this in a reckless way; after five years the copies are destroyed. This is done regardless of whether it is an average mass product or a film work of art of the highest rank. Re-showings of old films are thought undesirable and only become possible with great difficulty. The reason for this evil lies ultimately in the fact that the film is not sold but only distributed. One cannot buy a film that is out of circulation as one can buy another work of art, for it goes back to the producer, who, as the owner of the film, has the right to destroy it.
As a matter of fact there is also limitation of circulation time in other fields of contemporary production. Thus the hfetime of all fashion articles (clothing, hats, shoes) is artificially shortened by the poor quality of the material employed and 'dernier cri' propaganda, in order to free the market for new products.
Other works of art and cultural documents arc prcscrvcci in museums and private collections, but films have to be destroyed after a few years. Because of this culturally fatal situation film archives have been set up in various countries to preserve prints of the most important films that have been withdrawn from circulation. When these films can no longer be explciited commercially, they can still serve to educate students of film art, as well as for scientific analysis of the film and for the purposes of history, sociology, psychology and natural science. The more the film progresses, and the more it reveals its specific film history, the greater becomes the importance of these scientific film institutes.
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