Filmindia (1941)

ON THE COVER L£CLA CHITNIS Proprietors : FILMINDIA PUBLICATIONS Ltd. 104 Apollo Strett, Fori, Bombar filmindia Editor: B ABU RAO PATEL VOL. 7 NO. 7 JULY, 1941 Patas'des 01 lite {!nc>udi\j ULL many a v^^oe of our present day film industry must be attributed to the film distributor in the country. The film distributor, as we find him today, is an inexcusable evil. He is the main plank of the capitalistic exploitation of our film industry. He exploits both the producer and the exhibitor, always unmercifully for personal benefit and no industry in the world can survive to tell the story of its progress as long as these ruthless and mercenary middlemen are permitted to handle and mishandle the fortunes of an industry. Hollywood producers have solved this problem by opening out their own distribution offices and thereby establishing direct contact with the exhibitors. They have chased out the middleman who never felt any institutional pride in their product and who merely juggled with finance and figures as cold-heartedly as a calculating machine. But in India, with financing conditions still precarious, the professional film distributor thrives; neither by inheritance nor by inclination is the average film distributor in the country suited for his business. What he knows of picture making or of showmanship is not worth knowing. He comes with a fortune made in share and cotton gambling, advances money to the producer at a killing rate of interest plus a big slice of royalty and recovers his investment by blackmailing the exhibitors into giving heavy and uneconomic minimum guarantees. His only aim in life is to multiply his rupee and in prosecuting this aim he does not worry about the future of the industry or about the existence of the producer or the exhibitor. We have received numerous complaints from exhibitors unfolding a heartless method of exploitation practised by these industrial parasites. Exhibitors are made to sign waterproof contracts for a number of pictures, after the fashion of a blind and block booking, and made to screen as many as twenty rotten and useless pictures with one good picture. The profits made by the exhibitor in that solitary good picture hardly cover the losses incurred in the rotten twenty ones. At the end of the very first year, the exhibitor is often compelled to mortgage his cinema to pay the maintenance expenses. Thanks to the heartless exploitation by the Film Distributors. At stations, where there are two and more cinemas, the distributor sets loose a spirit of unhealthy rivalry between the competitors and gives his pictures to the one who gives the largest minimum guarantee This minimum guarantee keeps going up constantly till it becomes economically impossible for the exhibitor to give it and make any profits on the business. With shortsightedness and lack of unity prevalent among the exhibitors themselves, it becomes an easy job for the film distributor to divide and exploit the exhibitors. Good and sincere showmen are thus deprived of the opportunity of doing an honest business and are soon chased out of the exhibition trade because it becomes an uneconomic problem resulting in recurring losses. Good showmanship under these conditions is out of the question. Producers in the country seem to forget the vital fact that the exhibitor is