* * * * Films and the Law
One of the most valuable products of the recent Colonial Office Conference has now been made available for the use of administrators in British Colonies, Protectorates, and Mandated Territories. This Report of the Colonial Films Committee was, issued on Monday as a printed Parliamentary paper. It concerns, in the words of Lord Passfield's covering paper, " the use of the kinematograph film as an instrument of culture and education . . . especially with primitive peoples." The authorities are urged to support the collective effort to he made by British industry to combat the present domination by foreign films, and arc also bidden to keep the Government at home apprised of the local arrangements for censor- ship and other regulations. These are particularly important where the tendency is to show pictures of the follies or vices of civilized races. The Committee suggested a small central organization in London under the F.B.I. to act as a centre of supply. We understand that in this country the present Films Act, requiring a proportion of British films, without regard to quality, to be shown, bears harshly on cinema owners outside certain theatre " ring." The public is also ill :served by shoddy films which arc an insult to the intelligence, but the proprietors declare that they cannot get better ones.
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