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THE FILM AND THE PUBLIC
audience for films made in languages other than English and employing techniques and styles outside the normal pattern of film-making shown in the cinemas. A few specialized theatres opened outside London in the years before the War, but it was not until after the 1 939-45 War that the distribution of foreign-language films began to be a commercial proposition through the normal channels of exhibition. That it became so was due to the hard work put in by the film societies and the few established specialized theatres like the Academy in London or the Cosmo in Glasgow. Among the most enterprising of the larger film societies was the Merseyside Film Institute and the Edinburgh Film Guild. The latter, inspired by Norman Wilson and Forsyth Hardy (who edited the memorable Cinema Quarterly 1932-35), founded after the War the Edinburgh Film Festival, which is still entirely the responsibility of the Guild, and has now become one of the most successful annual international film festivals to be held in Europe.
The Federation of English and Welsh Film Societies and the Federation of Scottish Film Societies together represented in 1953 over 200 organizations. Their link with the British Film Institute is dealt with in an appendix to this book, which describes the Institute's work as a whole. The Institute itself was founded some twenty years ago as an official body to further the study of the film and to preserve in its archive, the National Film Library, those films which it is thought at the moment will have importance to the future as historical records or as contributions to the general understanding of the film's development, both as an art and as popular entertainment.
It was a sign of the coming of age of the cinema that an official body should have been created, with public money, devoted to the study of the cinema and to the permanent preservation of films of significance. The film then took its proper place alongside the other arts. It is now no longer neglected by people responsible for education, as, for example, the founding of the Society of Film Teachers shows. The society had by 1954 some hundreds of enthusiastic 264