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Proprietors :
FILMINDIA PUBLICATIONS Ltd. 104 Apollo Street, Fort, Bombay
[Editor: BABURAO PATEL
VOL. 7 NO. 4
APRIL, 1941
7 HE replies given by the Hon. Sir Reginald Maxwell to the numerous questions asked by Mr. G. V. Deshmukh, Sardar Sant Singh and Mr. Lalchand Navalrai in the Central Legislative Assembly regarding the affairs of the Film Advisory Board do more than justify "filmindia's" previous criticism of the conduct and working of the Board.
No one, right from the Hon. Home Member to the film packer in the Board, seems to know what exactly are the aims and the objects of the Film Advisory Board. Organising, therefore, to achieve those objects naturally becomes a secondary matter.
When Mr. G. V. Deshmukh inquired whether the Government were prepared to take educationists and publicists, the Hon. Sir. Reginald Maxwell gave a categorical refusal and said that "the function of the Board was to advise the Government on technical questions relating to the production and distribution of films." And to give this advice members were only required to possess "a knowledge of the film industry on the producing and the distributing sides." Govern^ ment do not even care to know how many of the present members are educationists or publicists.
Pressed further by Mr. Deshmukh the Hon. Home Member said that the Board was not started "only for war propaganda but for the primary object of disseminating correct information and of making one part of the Empire interested in another and of giving correct information about the other parts of the Empire"— and all these things are intended to help the war.
Pressed still further by Mr. Deshmukh, Sir Reginald said that the original objects were "not quite primarily" to educate the overseas countries and to help war efforts, but "to advise Government in the production of films both internal and external."
And further pressure elicited further explanation, viz., "the films that are produced cover a number of Government activities, both war effort and the performance of Indian troops in the war, their training and so forth, and the activities of various Government departments of the country generally. In fact it is an effort to harness the film industry for the purpose of publicity which was not hitherto done."
From the replies given by the Hon. Sir Reginald Maxwell, the Home Member to the Government of India under whose direct responsibility the Film Advisory Board is working, there seems to be so much confusion regarding the aims and the objects of the Board, in the brains of one man that we wouldn't be surprised to find a riot of ideas and ideals in the rest of the crowd.
Assuming that the Government required only advice on "technical questions relating to the production and distribution of films", where was the earthly necessity of appointing a crowd of nineteen members on the Board including even machinery dealers? Two men, one knowing production and the other knowing distribution, would have been more than enough. Or in the case of a man like Rai Bahadur Chunilal, Government could have easily got from a single person very reliable advice both in production and distribution.