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THE FILM IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION
quest for the film through the channels which have been indicated to it and in a week or ten days gets a reply to the effect that all the prints of the film are in use and that the order cannot be filled. In some instances this reply is accompanied by the suggestion that an alternative date be indicated, and in others the local church is asked to select another film. This time-consuming process may not exhaust the patience of professionals in religious education, but it leaves the volunteer worker depressed and wondering, if "something cannot be done about distribution."
The demand for the seasonal films — Easter, Christmas, Lent, Thanksgiving, etc. — has grown rapidly, and present distribution arrangements breakdown even more critically. When five thousand churches want one of these seasonal films at approximately the same date, their demand can not be met by a dozen prints concentrated in big-city film depositories and film libraries. While the production of a greater number of seasonal films will help this situation, it is basically a problem in distribution and it must be appreciated and solved as such.
It is axiomatic that the closer a given film is to the ultimate consumer the more it will be used. While the print of an Easter film in New York can be sent three hundred miles and serve one customer, a locally-owned print of the same film can serve, under the conditions of local distribution, up to ten churches, because the film owner knows personally each user and the users arrange among themselves the transportation of the film. Thus, the conditions of utilization indicate clearly that no system of distribution based on longrange service will ever work with satisfaction to the consumer unless these central depositories carry an enormously large number of prints of each film. Since each print will earn only a few rentals per year, there is no way for the purchase or lease price of these prints to be recovered.
Any ultimate and fruitful solution to the problem of film distribution in religious education will rest upon a number of
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