'The Cinematograph and Mission Propaganda'

"Crosslink" Sept 2000

By Yvonne Wilkie and Donald Cochrane

“It behoves the churches to keep abreast of the times and to make use of the cinema, wireless, and other modern inventions, which appeal to the adult and the child”, stated the writer of the International Missionary Conference Publicity Committee, which met in Dunedin in May 1926.

The missionaries were the most enthusiastic promoters of the use of ‘moving pictures'. The Rev. J.L. Gray of the Punjab mission suggested to the Foreign Missions Committee that the cinema film India Today could be used during deputation work in 1927. Despite considerable discussion on its merits Gray's suggestion bore no fruit.

Use of cinema continued to be raised over the next ten years but financial retrenchment of the early 1930s lay behind their delay in making any final decision. The missionaries' continued enthusiasm to make use of cinema as a means of education finally swayed the Committee to purchase ‘Kodak's best modern projector' in 1936. Although the 1936 report to the General Assembly expressed concern as to the value of the moving picture as a medium of missionary education, they agreed to include films in future deputation work.

The Committee invited the Rev. Henry Gilbert to travel to India and China on its behalf in late 1936 and suggested that he produce a film or films of the missionaries' activities. When viewing the films on Gilbert's return to New Zealand, the Superintendent of the Missions Committee, expressed his satisfaction at how well the films had turned out. ‘As far as we can judge' he wrote, ‘ they all are of a high standard'.

Mr. George Gray from the Saharanpur Industrial School in the Panjab holds the honour of being the first missionary to use the cinema on deputation tours in 1937. He brought with him 1500 feet of film to accompany his lectures. The Outlook reports that the films ‘thoroughly illustrated the various phases of mission life in India and the results were clear and informing.'

The Committee's decision to purchase a cine camera in 1938 was the turning point in the Church's use of film as its ‘propaganda' tool. Over the next two to three decades films in black and white, colour, and sound were made of the Maori Mission, New Hebrides, and South China as well as local aspects of the church's activities. Apart from Henry Gilbert's South China film no other pre World War 2 film aapears to have survived. Those films lost include all film taken in India, additional film taken in South China and India in 1938/39, and film taken around the Maori Mission field in 1938.

We welcome any information on tracing cine film relating to the Presbyterian Church. Please contact the Archives Office.

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