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Idealistic Exhibitors

‘…we drive to an inn a bit further on, the automobile almost sinks to the bottom of a mudhole, we set everything up, do a trial run. Then it’s time and at 7:30 the second show starts. Fifty country dwellers fill the small room. The screen hangs in a box bed’.

Still from De laatste dagen van een eiland (NL, Ernst Winar, 1938)

In the winter of 1925/1926, the socialist Jef Last toured through the Dutch provinces of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe showing films. He drove his ‘red automobile’ through the north of the Netherlands to show ‘edifying’ films to workers and farmers. This was done not in official cinemas, but in inns, schools and clubhouses instead.

Last consciously chose for these provisional locations. He detested the official cinemas that, in his opinion, were only driven by greed. To him, a cinema was a corrupt place where the filmgoer unresistingly handed himself over to ‘the thrills stimulated by the most vulgar depictions’. They weren’t the proper environment for his edifying and educational films.

Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling

Last was employed as driver, operator and explicateur (a narrator who introduced and commented on the films) by the Instituut voor Arbeidersontwikkeling (the IVAO, or ‘Institute for Workers’ Development’). This socialist institute launched a cultural development offensive in 1925 to put people in touch with films that showed ‘...what kind of artistic possibilities are offered by film, films that everyone, thus especially the opponent of the cinema, should see’.

The IVAO didn’t just screen socialist propaganda films such as Het pinksterfeest van de AJC or the film about the Workers’ Olympics (the Arbeiter Olympiade) held in Frankfurt in 1925, it also showed industrial films (including films from Philips), ontwikkelingsfilms (‘development films’; these were on subjects such as the fishing industry, or life in southern Limburg), informative films (about the damaging effects of alcohol) and feature films (Battleship Potemkin, Storm over Asia and La passion de Jeanne d’Arc).

The ideal that ran through this choice of films, however, was more bourgeois than Marxist, and the cultural development ‘mission’ was aimed more against the numbing, sensationalist cinema culture than towards a socialistic utopia. In the 1927/1928 season, the IVAO put on 309 screenings and drew in 78,000 visitors.

Almost as bad as brothels

The IVAO weren’t the only ones choosing an alternative circuit. The condemnation of the cinema culture ran through socialist, Catholic, Protestant and liberal groups who all shared a mutually puritanical perspective on the matter. Communists, Catholics and liberals all turned to non-commercial venues to screen their film programmes.

The Calvinists had the greatest aversion to the cinemas, which were ‘almost as bad as brothels’. Films and cinemas were a threat to one’s mental and moral well-being. In 1934, however, this general attitude of disgust was set aside and the Nederlandsche Christelijke Filmcentrale (NCF) was founded. Its goal was to use film to support the dissemination of the Christian faith. Films and screening venues were evaluated very strictly. Missionary houses and relief work camps were their preferred locations.

The film most frequently ordered by the NFC was a film produced by Multifilm about the Vrije Universiteit (the Free University in Amsterdam). In 1938, the NFC itself commissioned a feature film, De laatste dagen van een eiland, which was directed by Ernst Winar. The film premiered on 16 December 1938 in an small non-commercial venue.