F ilms and Finance Tolend the British film industry £6 millions
over five years pin thou the National Film Finance Corporation while taking "e0 millions in Entertainments Duty from it during the same period will never get the industry off the Govenunent's hands. Speakers in the ' filibuster' debate in the Commons, after Which the loans were extended for another three years, admitted as much. Even with the aid of loans from the Corporation and With the Eady Scheme, introduced in 1950 to help film pro- fiteers, the process was bound to be a slow one. At that the Plant Report on the distribution and exhibition of alms was already speaking of the rates of Entertainments Duty as „ being "in general quite excessive." Since then, a con- titag decline in cinema attendances, now nearly a fifth down on 1946, 1946. has further weakened the producer's—and in par- ticular the independent producer's—chances of covering the st-s' of making his films. Here, as on the exhibiting side, it CO the independents, who are outside the big circuits and tabines, who are in the worst position. The home exhibitor, on whom the producer overwhelmingly depends hi,,eover his costs, continues to pay away nearly 35 per cent. of d; box office receipts in Entertainments Duty. This rate of boY• higher than on any other type of entertainment, might be a s'," by a flourishing industry, but it is plainly overloading ung one, which has not yet thrown off, especially in the Bug studios, some of its old inefficiency and wastage. If the smaller independent producers, who have been responsible for there of the industry's best work in the past, are to carry on, is a reasonable case for some degree of tax concession.
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