Film and TV Technician (1957)

May 1957 FILM & TV TECHNICIAN 75 "Kemp's"— 1957 Book Reviews KEMP'S FILM AND TV DIRECTORY, 1957 (10/6 — Free to British production companies and Studio Managers). This directory includes for the first time a Technicians' Section for which A.C.T.T. and N.A.T.K.E. co-operated with the publishers. Whether you want to find a composer for a TV jingle, buy some cutting-room equipment or hire a police car, you can find names, addresses and 'phone numbers listed in the appropriate categories, which are conveniently indexed at the end. In New Form This is the first issue in a new form, and I do not mean to be discouraging to the publishers in pointing out a few things that seem to be rather strange. If you wanted to look up the address of A.C.T. Films Ltd., you would look in vain under " Producing Companies— Feature Films ", and yet it appears in a number of such categories as the producers of TV commercials, cartoons and entertainment shorts. Among the trade and professional associations one cannot find the E.T.U., the Musicians' Union, the Children's Film Foundation, nor the Newsreel Association to mention a few. How has a German documentary production company with a Berlin address crept in among the scores of animated and cartoon production companies? Our Union's name is printed in two different ways — both of them wrong. Such errors will, no doubt, be corrected next year, but I would suggest to the Editor that he includes a few blank pages, where omissions and changes of address can be filled in by the owners of the Directory. Co-operation Welcome Increased members' co-operation in future no doubt will be welcomed by the publishers, whose address is 299-301 Gray's Inn Road, W.C.I. I have been severe in criticism — but only in the spirit of being helpful towards a most valuable book, whose printing is beautifully clear and which is attractively bound in a glossy stiff card cover. C.B. Push-Bike across India The Ride to Chandigarh, by Harold Elvin. Macmillan, 25/-. " When India in the partition of '47 lost half the Punjab to Pakistan, the Indian Punjab lost its capital, Lahore. So now they are building a new capital, and they are doing it on virgin land, and its nearest village is Chandigarh and hence its name. I just want to see it." That was how Harold Elvin explained to his host, an Indian Salvation Army Major, why he was starting out on a cycle ride of over two thousand miles across India to the foot of the Himalayas. " And this city, is it a worth seeing place ", the Indian asked. " It will be. It's only just beginning. They sent for four of the most famous architects in the world to design it; the Frenchmen Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, and the English Maxwell Fry and his wife Jane Drew ". Threefold Equipment " The Ride to Chandigarh " to see " the vast areas of nothing that will soon be something," is certainly a most " well worth reading book ". Harold Elvin had the advantage of a three-fold equipment for his task. In the first place he is a long-distance pedal cyclist on a truly epic scale. His pilgrimages on two wheels had already taken him to Constantinople and back and to Leningrad and back. He had cycled in the cold of Lapland as well as in extremes of heat. In the second place he travels with an appreciative eye and an appreciative mind. His ride across India was to see the beginnings of a great architectural experiment, and he himself has had an architect's training and worked in architects' offices. On top of that five years working in Elstree Film Studios, in the Art Department and as Floor Manager, have given him an artist's appreciation of people as well as places. Poona Anyone who has ever worked on a film with an eastern setting will appreciate this description of Poona: " Sometimes in Hollywood they make a street scene of the East and they go round scraping up everything from every studio lot, from buggy-carts to buffaloes, from lechers to lepers, from rickshaws even to trains, and sling them all in as if tightly stoppered up into twenty short yards so that the hero can't get down the street Peasant Face [Still by Frank Horvat without being lost to the camera ten times: and all this to give an impression of the East. But here it all is! But ten times more packed and extending for miles, not for yards." And then a note of burning indignation creeps into the description, for in Poona Elvin found not only seething life and colour but also " stench and poverty to set the whole world to shame that while this exists they dare to talk of money for armaments." This is a book which will be enjoyed by anyone who wants to know about the places and the people of India that lie off the beaten track as well as such famous monuments as the Taj Mahal. M.C. WORKERS ABROAD, Vol. Ill (published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, Paris, 1957, in English). For some of our members, who go on foreign locations, the thrill (Continued on page 76)