FilmIndia (1940)

FILM INDIA January 1940 Mr. Kishore Sahu whose enterprising spirit is responsible for the starting of a new film production company called "India .Artists Ltd." Mr. Sahu is the Managing Director. pictures — poor publicity. The producer ought to realize that cinema is not one of the necessities of life like bread or clothes. It is an entertainment. People, therefore, have to be induced to see films. It is the purpose of publicity to draw people's attention to your picture and to create among the public so much interest that they should be willing to spend money to see it. Naturally, the more intelligently planned a publicity campaign the bigger audiences it will draw. But let not the producer forget that the only purpose of publicity is to popularise your pictures and in an indirect manner, your stars, etc. All advertising should, therefore, be placed with this sole object. Papers have to be selected according to their ''pull." Also for some kind of pictures a certain type of papers are .more suitable and should be utilized. It is no use producing an eight-page supplement advertising a Gujerati or Marathi picture in an Anglo-Indian p;iper; equally futile it will be to advertise a Punjabi picture in a Tamil magazine. In actual practice what do we find? The wrong papers carry off the bulk of the publicity plums be cause it flatters the vanity of the producer to see the name of his picture — and sometimes possibly his own name and photograph! — in a paper of the 'Sahib log'! Besides being a slavish exhibition of inferiority complex this is bad from the business point of view as the same money could be expended in a more judicious manner to secure better effect. I am certainly not opposed to advertising in the Anglo-Indian press which enjoys considerable circulation among a certain class of people. But I do maintain that it is bad business to discriminate in favour of these papers at the expense of the nationalist and vernacular press, which reaches the vast mass of Indian cine-goers who really make the vital difference between the success or the failure of a picture. At the same time I have observed that certain journals, having limited or no sales at all, are patronized by producers because they always indulge in wholesale flattery. Their commercial influence is nil but they are fed and fattened simply because the boss likes to read in their pages superlative adjectives for the most hopeless picture that he may produce. Publicity done on such unbusinesslike lines can hardly assure the success of pictures. WHEN FAILURE IS SUCCESS There is only one kind of failure that is justified — the failure of a picture like "Bari Didi" (though better publicity could have certainly improved the takings on this picture). When an unusually good picture fails to draw — not because it is bad but because it is too good for the average cine-goer — then it is wrong to judge it from commercial view-point. Such a picture is a work of art which cannot be evaluated in terms of rupees, annas and pies. Then we cannot say that the picture failed. It is truer to say that the audience flopped. Such commercial failures however are artistic triumphs and help to improve and refine the taste of audiences while taking the screen a step towards its social ideals. Why should I have written at such length about the purely commercial aspect of film production? I am not Mr. Abdul Hameed, the enterprising Advertising Chief of Bata has just returned to Batanagar after an extended tour in America and Japan. concerned whether a capitalist loses a couple of lakhs or not. I suppose most of them deserve to lose it. But I am determined to do my best to ensure the steady development and continued progress of the film industry. For with this industry is linked the life of thousands of workers — stars. artistes. directors, technicians and even journalists — for whom the failure of each studio means greater hardships. These brave men and women have built up this industry patiently and laboriously, they have earned social odium and risked continued financial insecurity. They have made mistakes, of course, but that was inevitable during the pioneering stage. They have given us. the public, millions of hours of enjoyment and made not a few producers millionaires. The least we can do for them is to see that this industry is stabilized. At the back of my mind is also the thought that in the not too distant future the cinema in India will emerge as a potent cultural force for the regeneration of the vast masses of this country. Let us not allow incompetent producers to stifle or stunt its growth. 34