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them to draw up educational film programmes. The present stock of the School Bank comprises : 170 scientific films, 114 landscapes, 75 comedies; 60 topical, 23 moral, and 43 patriotic films, 17 illustrating the life of other peoples, 24 on sports, etc. The titles of 60 films are in course of being changed to the Roumanian tongue. As a rule, a school or cultural propaganda programme includes a short lecture, a film of three or more acts, and some short single-act films, varying in number from 3 to 6 according to their length. The number of the programmes shown in the different schools and institutions, with films supplied by the School Bank, are as follows : 156 in 1927, 352 in 1928, and 209 from the 1st January to the 1st July 1929. At the present moment the School Bank is about to open, in collaboration with the big cultural intitution, the « Athenee Ronmain », of Bucharest, two permanent educational cinema theatres, in premises that have been specially equipped in the basement of the splendid palace of that Institute.
I may mention that the sums spent by the Caisse des Ecoles during these last years to procure cinema apparatus and films amounts to 10,381,000 lei, or, in terms of better known European currency, over one and a half million French francs.
While on this subject of the obstacles hampering the expansion of the cultural film, and having in view not so much the strictly instructional film as those that are educational in the broader sense of the word — that is to say the cinematograph of a kind to awaken better feeling — I should add: (1st) the lack of legislative measures to protect and encourage good films in their fight against bad ones ; (2nd) the lack of a national industry.
Up to the present, the law has viewed the film merely as taxable material producing a sure revenue. The Fisc collects from cinematographic shows, under different heads and for diverse purposes, taxes amounting to 32% of the gross proceeds of taxation.
Cinema managers are .induced to cultivate popular films so as to cover their expenses. In this domain, success and scandal are synonimous terms. Sensational or bawdy films that excite the imagination, make the public gasp, and that stir up their nerves fill the halls and fill the coffers, to the satisfaction of the impresarios and the fiscal anthorities. Even films of a frivolous society type and sentimental romances that attract a certain class of women, are hardly able to slip in, in the wake of films of this kind. Such spectacles do a propaganda all their own, by contributing to lower public taste. So true is this indeed that a film such as « Nanouk » fails and « The Miracle of the Wolves » barely manages to cover its cost.
Roumania has no cinema industry of its own. A few productions of different kinds — published sporadically by the Studio of Bukarest — as also the mediocre productions of certain Hungarian firms at Oradia or Arad, do not constitute any permanent business, deserving the name of Roumanian Film. Whatever the cinematograph, in its mute character, may represent in international art, it is nevertheless a fact that the spectacle of things, events and personages more closely akin to and