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Salient. Victoria University Students Newspaper. Volume 38 Number 8. 1975
A Crappy Film ... Good Tidings?
A Crappy Film ... Good Tidings?
Dear Bruce,
The various International Evenings held since the beginning of this term have been organised jointly by an ad hoc committee of the Welfare Services and the Student Assoc. This fact is well publicised. The aim of organising these evenings is to foster international friendship and understanding amongst all the students at Victoria, hopefully. Many interested students from Fiji, Samoa, Malaysia and New Zealand have been spending a lot of their time organising these evenings, and being involved myself in this respect, I find that your 'Crappy Film' criticism is very unconstructive and insulting.
| a. | The committer does not favour tourist promotion films: |
| b. | The showing of a film depicting life in Fiji was decided upon by the committee two weeks before The event and films such as the one in question were disapproved of then. [unclear: Owing] o the difficulties in obtaining any films that presented a fair view of Fiji, the organisers had to settle for the 'Crappy Film'; |
| c. | The film must be seen in the context of what happened after the [unclear: slowing]. It was [unclear: strongly critcise of] one of the Fijian students immediately and the audience's response was to indicate positively that even if it was the purpose of the organisers to commit 'cultural aggression' they would have failed miserably. |
Looking at the whole issue from another point of view, why should a 'Crappy Film' not be shown if only for the sake of entertaining mass criticisms from the audience later on? This is the more democratic way of running things rather than being blind to the fact that not everyone holds the same opinion. If the film is bad it will be criticised but to lay blame on the organisers for promoting 'imperialism' in this instance is clearly unfair. Let us also remember that some of us (not all), are thinking people with a strong sense of social justice like the critic. These people would presumably carry the debate on the merits of the film further among their friends.
R. Pui