World Film News and Television Progress (Apr 1936-Mar 1937)

News Review The Scottish Travel Association, 2 North Charlotte Street, Edinburgh, announces that its library of miniature scenic films will be available this winter for loan to bona fide amateur ciriematographers and film clubs. Additions to the collection this year include a film showing a holiday in a motor yacht, one each on grouse shooting and deer stalking, and two in colour (Kodachrome) of the City of Aberdeen and the County of Stirlingshire respectively. * * * A new film of Knaresborough which has been produced by Mr. H. Collinson for the Urban District Council, was praised at its first public screening in the Town Hall, Knaresborough. The programme also included a production of Knaresborough's events of the year, made by Mr. G. Mann. * * * Propaganda films for the milk industry have been frequent in the past 1 8 months and several more are now in course of production. The Scottish Milk Marketing Board has aknost completed a film to advertise milk in cinemas throughout Scotland. A unit from Publicity Films Ltd. is now engaged in the shooting of a colour film of the milk industry for the Co-operative Wholesale Society. * * * Included in the £200,000 development scheme of John Rubin Limited, the big Liverpool store, are plans for a 250-seater cinema. Advertising films on 16-mm. stock will be shown in this cinema. They will deal with the products of the store and will be used to augment the personal salesmanship of the staff. * * * Ealing Corporation electricity undertaking is advertising on the screens of the local Odeon and Walpole cinemas. * * * L.M.S. employees are receiving instruction in railway work by means of films shown in a special L.M.S. film coach which has now travelled 18,000 miles, visiting 40 towns. * • * * Meadow to Market, a short talkie film describing New Zealand meat industry, has been prepared under the direction of the New Zealand Meat Producers Board for use in publicity campaigns in this coimtry. * * * Southport Publicity and Attractions Committee have co-operated with the L.M.S. Railway Com pany in the production of two films. One shows Southport as a winter resort and the other, in colour, depicts the summer attractions of the town. Both films are to be circulated throughout the Railway Company's film library for exhibition to members of clubs and societies. * * * L.M.S. Railway Company are giving an exhibition of films to their staff at Stoke on October 21st. The films will show what happens to an engine between journeys, men and women of the L.M.S. and their children at play, the L.M.S. newsreel for 1936, and a film depicting the work of the famous West Coast postal train. * * * In order to build up a library of music suitable for use in its travel films, and also to provide opportunities for local composers, the Tourist and Publicity Department of the Government of New Zealand is offering to use New Zealand compositions if such are found suitable. It is proposed to make story-films with simple themes of an outdoor nature on New Zealand's life, scenery, and sport. Manuscripts of this type, which need not be in scenario form, may be submitted to the Government Advertising Studio, Darlington Road, Welhngton, N.Z. * * * Bookings are now in hand for The Wee Blue Blossom, a new film sponsored by the Irish Linen Guild of Belfast. Produced by Publicity Films Limited, the film tells the story of this old Irish weaving industry in a general survey of the stages through which the flax plant must pass before it reaches fulfilment in the form of Irish linen. The film is directed by John Alderson and photographed by Walter Blakeley. Characteristic Irish airs have been used in the specially arranged music which accompanies the film throughout ; while an informative commentary describes the weaving process in detail. * * * An increasing number of travel magazines are featuring Ireland's attractions as a hohday centre. Now comes the report that the Irish Tourist Association Film Unit has just completed its first season's work. The Unit was started with the object of making tourist propaganda and documentary films in order to further the Association's work and to promote world-wide interest in Ireland. Naturally, it has been impossible to cover the entire country in one season's work but sufficient material for three short pictures has been gathered, and also a quantity of "library" shots. Market-day Film Shows A circuit of Market-day Film Shows has been planned by Western Electric to operate between October and April in three hundred of the principal market towns of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These have been chosen as representing the largest drawing centres of important rural and agricultural districts. Selection is based on statistical and other information from the official reports of the Ministry of Agriculture, supplemented by careful study on the ground of local conditions. At each town a continuous performance of films of agricultural and rural interest, specially produced by firms of repute interested in the agricultural market, will be given on Market Day. Admission to the performances will be free and showings will be held in selected halls adjoining the market. In these halls Western Electric portable talking picture equipment, in the charge of expert operators, will be installed. Facihties are provided for literature or business reply cards, etc., bearing on the featured products to be available to members of the audience on leaving the hall. Cotton Queen Manchester's cotton mills will come to the screen in the new feature picture Cotton Queen, which is being directed by Bernard Vorhaus at the Rock studios, Elstree. Will Fyffe, Stanley HoUoway and Mary Lawson play leading parts and the supporting cast includes Donald Calthrop, Helen Haye and Syd Courtenay, who was also responsible for the story. * * * For the past five years the Overseas League has been building up a film distribution machine among school children and with the help of the various Dominion Governments, the G.P.O. film unit and the Empire FUm Library they have shown films to five thousand children per week. The films are on Empire subjects and have educational value. The programmes are especially selected for children from 10 to 16 years of age. * * * Gaumont-British Equipments are engaged at present in the production of fikns for Messrs. Wedgwood Ltd., Fry's, Empire Tea Marketing Bureau, International Combustion Ltd., Avery's Scale Manufacturing Company, Anglo-American Oil Company, and Player's Tobacco. THE STRAND FILM COMPANY LTD Producers of Documentary, Educational, Propaganda, Publicity, and Training Films. 37-39 Oxford Street London W.l. Gerrard 3122-3-4 31