Children's Film Society

The decision of the Government of India, announced by the Minister of Information and Broadcasting at the third film festival organised by the Cultural Film Society at Delhi last December, to form a national body to sponsor the production and exhibition of films for children in this country was widely and deservedly hailed at the time as a move in the right direction. It was more than that. It was a necessary and lone overdue move in a matter of vital importance to the future of our people. Commending the Cultural Film Society at its second film festival in December 1953, Dr Radhakrishnan, Vice President of India, had remarked: ''When we talk of putting before our nation certain great ideals, those ideals do not become functioning realities simply because they are stated in our books or incorporated in our Constitution. They require to be assimilated by the people of the country. This assimilation takes place spontaneously, more or less unconsciously, by the way in which those ideals are portrayed in pictures, in literature, on the stage and the screen, in the lives of our leaders and in the example of parents and others who have the care and guidance of young people in their charge. If therefore we want our young people to acquire the proper ideals of human rights and of the need for truthfulness and integrity in private as well as public life, it is not by asking them to be truthful or to love their neighbour that we can succeed. It is by presenting to them, and keeping before their eyes and minds, concrete examples of truthfulness, integrity and of all the other virtues we wish them to acquire and to practise. One of the best and most powerfully effective means of doing so is the cinema, which enables us to show children in the films they see great examples of moral character, high courage, heroic deeds and magnanimous behaviour, from which they may absorb the examples unconsciously and practise them consciously in their own lives." There we have the aim and purpose with which the Cultural Film Society embarked three years ago upon the programme which culminated in the official registration last May of the Children's Film Society. 

The immediate task before the Society is the provision of pictures suitable for showing to the children of this country. The programme which it has devised for this purpose is commendably practical and shows due regard for the problems involved. It is threefold, and comprises, firstly, the production of original films designed specially for exhibition to the children of our country; secondly, the adjustment by cutting and editing of such Indian feature films as are found suitable for showing to our children. The third part of the programme consists in the adaptation, by dubbing into Indian languages, of foreign films made specially for children-of which there is a rich and varied store-or suitable for exhibition to them, of which, too, there are quite a few such as "Bambi," "Hans Christian Andersen," "Alice in Wonderland" or ''The Living Desert." The task is not easy by any means and so far as the production of original films goes it is one of considerable difficulty. With the requisite co-operation between the industry and the Government it is certainly not insuperable.