FilmIndia (1940)

March 1940 FILMINDIA A picture from the Russian film "Ashkhabad". {Could, from page -~)9) concentrates his main attention on individual persons created by the revolution. His important films are "Mother", "End of St. Petersburg", "Deserteur", and the latest "Minin and Pozharsky." Dovshenko is a film director who endeavours to make synthesis of the Eisenstein and Pudovkin schools. He has created films of great social ideas, while at the same time saturating his productions with lyricism and emotion. The images of living people created by Dovzhenko grow into big social generalisations. He is creator of some of the finest films depicting Ukrainian life in "Earth" and "Arsenal". 50 MILLIONS SAW THIS FILM! . . Alongside these masters, a high standard has been reached by a number of younger directors, namely Barnett, Ermler, Trauberg, Yudkevich and others. The excellence of "Mother", "Potemkin". "Earth" has been maintained and continued in "Chapayev", the film produced by Vasilyev brothers concerning one of the episodes of Civil War. Their work represented a new synthesis of the creative efforts of Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Dovzhenko. That "Chapayev" is by no means a solitary achievement is proved by the recent appearances of "Lenin in October". "Return of Maxim". "We from Kronstadt" and many others. Over 50 million saw Chapayev. Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein's latest film was seen by six million people in one month alone. (Good films run in USSR for months together and are greeted by packed houses). 30.000 PROJECTORS At the beginning of 1925 only 14 per cent films shown in the country were of Soviet origin. Today the percentage is not less than 95. There are more than 30,000 projectors (inclusive of those in schools and other organisations'), over 10,000 being fully equipped theatres. Molotov's report provides for the extension of the net-work of cinema theatres and six-fold increase of permanent and other sound cinemas by the end of the Third Five Year Plan (1942). Film finance in the rest of the world is a cross between a science and racket. To finance a film, money is bought and sold. Lavish automobiles, expensive office equipment, costly advertising add to the overhead costs, and the film stars have to be persuaded by fat cheques to appear in pictures in order to persuade a jaded public to risk being fooled again. In the USSR stock exchanges and the brokers and middlemen have passed out of existence. Work is demanded from each according to his ability and is recomper.ced to each according to the work performed. The film industry and the film distributing trade is in the hands of the state, the controlling body being the All Union Soviet Film Direction in Moscow. The Film Section of the Central Committee of Art which is closely associated with the Government, regulates the planning of subjects as well as their subsequent execution. (Contd on page 63i A photo from "Lenin in October" a Russian picture with a socio-political theme. 61