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FOCUS: REVIEW
(Incorporating Catholic Film NeiSs)
Organ of the Catholic Film Institute
Vol. VI JULY 1953 No. 7
THE FILM
AS A TOOL
FOR GOOD
His Eminence, Cardinal de Gouveia, presiding at the Study Conference organised by O.C.I.C. to discuss the question of films in missionary countries made it clear that his primary concern with the cinema was as a tool enabling the missionary to do his work more effectively. The exhibition of films made explicitly for and by the missionaries illustrated the extent to which the film can be made to serve the purposes of religion.
The Vocations Exhibition will bring together a number of films made for the religious Orders in this country and those who attend the Exhibition will be able to see, perhaps for the first time, the extent to which the cinema is actually used by the Church. So many people still labour under the illusion that the cinema is but a recreational factor, more often than not concerned with meretricious nonsense. The Papal utterances on the use of film, both during the present as well as the late Pontificate, have made it clear that, properly used, the film can be the most powerful means of enlightenment available to modern science. In the words of the present Holy Father, the cinema represents, under proper direction, “an incomparable instrument of information and culture’’.
May we hope that one result of the Vocations Exhibition will be to stimulate the minds of the various Religious Orders as to the potentialities of the cinema in the work they are doing for God. In accordance with the Conclusions arrived at during the Conference at Malta, it would be a useful, fruitful thing for all concerned if the Orders would agree to pool their experiences and abilities and so come together to plan a complete coverage of films for religious purposes in this country. It need not be the far-fetched reality that many at present think it to be. Let us help each other to make the film a tool for God.