Motography (1912)

Tuxe. 191: MOTOGRAPHY 245 Film Supply Company announces that a regular feature film department has been established and that feature subjects will be released on an exclusive territory basis without any additional cost to the exhibitor. The release dates will be announced from time to time ''ii these feature films. The features will include the Eclair productions, both foreign and American. The foreign and American Gaumont features, as well as the Great Northern and Film D'Art will also furnish feature films from time to time and the regular releases will include the famous Gaumont colored pictures and the Eclair microscopic and scientific handcolored subjects. Any established exchange can secure service from the Film Supply Company. A new departure is promised by the company in the fact that it will lease and not sell its films. All films will be leased for a period covering the life of the copyright, but after one year from the date of the contract between the exchange and the Film Supply Company, one reel of old film must be returned for each reel of new film received. This will undoubtedly take the junk film out of the market. Treasurer Hite states for the benefit of the exhibitors if there be any section of the country where the present exchange is not able or willing to furnish a full Film Supply program a new exchange will be started there immediately to take care of the exhibitors' needs. The Film Supply Company seems to be conducted in good faith with the earnest intention to furnish the exhibitor the best that can be had in the film market and announces there will be no cut in prices, either to the exchange men. nor by the Mutual Film Company's exchanges to exhibitors, but that the present high quality of the film will be increased as fast as possible, so that the exhibitor will undoubtedly benefit. The officers of the Film Supply Company of America are methodically arranging their program and making ready for shipment to the exchanges which have already contracted for service, which number is increasing daily. The probable schedule of releases by the Universal Company include films from the Powers. Imp. Xestor. Victor. Republic and Champion cornpanic-. Xo information concerning the release date has been received. Lecturer Prophesies School Pictures Alfred Percival Graves, author of "Father O'Flynn-' and scores of other popular songs, thinks that the cinematograph will play an important part in the work of elementary schools in the near future. In the course of a lecture which he has given to the national teachers in the training college in Dublin he pointed out that every school under the London county council has a room appropriated for teaching by lantern lecture and Sir Ray Lanka-ter. a leading authority on education in England. has prophesied that within a year there would be cinematographs in all these school-. The use of the cinematograph has been made more convenient by the invention of screens upon which living pictures can be shown in broad daylight, methods by which the film can be arrested at any point for five minutes at a time, while the teacher i explaining whatever phenomenon i exhibited. In hot days the screen might be set up in a tent in the playground. As an educational expert himself, with a long experience of schools in England. Mr. Graves is strongly con vinced of the power of the cinematograph to engage and hold the attention of the pupils. The attention of city children whose minds are full of so many things is especially hard to engage, but the lantern lectures in the London schools have never failed to revive the flagging attention of the pupils. With every school a picture house there would be less need for the enforcement of the compulsory education act than there is at present, at all events until the novelty wore off. Picture theaters are springing up like mushrooms in Dublin and they are all doing a roaring business. They are drawing the people away from the public houses, and as they are quite free. from sensational or vulgar pictures their influence on the whole is elevating. This fact has helped to secure attention for the plea made by Mr. Graves for the use of the cinematograph in teaching history, geography and other subjects in the national schools. Motion Pictures Destroying German Drama German managers, actors and playwrights have made ready for action against the all conquering motion picture mania. At a meeting of delegates of national associations representing histronic art in Berlin this week, it was decided that heroic measures were necessary to preserve the theater from ruin at the hands of "kintopps." as motion picture show are called there. Reports from Berlin and the provinces revealed that many theatrical establishments are on the brink of disaster in consequence of "kintopp" competition. The craze for film shows is not only dealing box offices a deadly blow, but is tempting actors and actresses from the legitimate stage. The case was cited of a Berlin leading lady who has succumbed to the higher salaries offered bv film concerns, and who did not hesitate recently to fling herself into a lake to portray the principal role in a "'kintopp' melodrama entitled "Tired of Life." The concensus of opinion was that motion pictures should be confined by law to science and education, and should be debarred from invading the sacred realm of the drama. It was decided that one of the most potent means of fighting the "kintopp" would be to place a prohibitive import duty on foreign films and the imperial government will be petitioned to that end. Meantime, "kintopps" continue to sweep all before them. The kaiser's impresarios themselves capitulated to a seductive offer for the rental of the obsolete Royal Operetta theater, which will now be turned into a "Kintopp." Films To Popularize Electric Service Recently the Chippewa Valley Railway & Light Company has made use of a motion picture film entitled "Every Husband's Opportunity," to popularize the use of electric cooking and heating appliances in Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls, Wis. The picture is generally similar to that first produced for the Commonwealth Edison Company, Chicago. It depicts a young couple's troubles with their servant and their old-fashioned kitchen and laundry, but closes happily with a complete electrically equipped household. . The scenes were posed in a small community so as to he more applicable to the average central-station situation than was the original Chicago company's film. The Essanay Film Company. Chicago, made the pictures for the General Electric Company, which loan copies of the film to central stations of charge. A. E. Peircc of the Chippewa Valley compan;