Photoplay/Volume 36/Issue 4/Amateur Movies

THE complete announcement of awards in Photoplay's $2,000 Amateur Movie Contest will appear in next month's issue.

The examination of films by the board of judges has been an extended one but readers can count upon a full announcement of the prize winners in the October Photoplay. Meanwhile, many films entered in the contest have been returned to their owners. These films failed to get into the finals. If you have not received your film back, you still have a good chance of winning one of the prizes.

Watch next month's Photoplay.

COLLEGE amateurs will be interested in the cinematographic battle between Cambridge and Oxford.

Oxford started off with work on a college film, but Cambridge University rushed ahead and completed a comedy, "Aunt Matilda's Nephew." Not only did the collegians complete the film but they gave it two successful showings in Cambridge.

Cambridge has an advantage over Oxford in the attitude of the university authorities toward filming. An amateur cinematographic society is not allowed at Oxford and there are certain restrictions upon private filming.

There are no restrictions at Cambridge and the university has an enthusiastic society of about fifty members.

AND now the amateur camera is a menace! The officials of Winged Foot, at Mamaroneck, N.Y., barred amateur movie cameras from the course during the national open championship, which was won by Bobby Jones of Atlanta.

The barring was based upon the theory that golfers are as skittish as thoroughbred horses and that the least thing throws them off their game. The whirr of a movie camera, said the officials, was likely to cause any one of the contestants to blow up. They pointed out that Johnny Farrell almost lost the open championship last year at Olympia Fields when somebody shot off an amateur movie camera under his nose just as he was about to make a brassie shot.

The ban on movie cameras raised a lot of discussion and much condemnation, be it noted. The amateurs wanted pictures of the competitors and they said so in a number of letters to the New York newspapers.

THE Metropolitan Motion Picture Club (of New York City) held an interesting meeting recently with one hundred and fifty members present. The meeting was held in the main exhibition room of the Camera Club. The two-hour program included an address by Carl Oswald on "Lenses and Focusing Problems" and the projection of three amateur films. One was a news reel by Mrs. James R. Hughes, of Detroit, Mich.; another was the Princeton Undergraduate production, "Incident, and the third was Myron Zobel's South Sea scenic, "The Fires of the Dead." All three of these films were entries in the recent Photoplay contest.

A NEW group of amateurs in New York, called Eccentric Films, has launched a two-reel film called "What's Wrong Now?" built from a story by Lajos Egri, the Hungarian playwright whose expressionistic drama, "Rapid Transit," was produced by the Provincetown Players last season.

There will be no subtitles in the film, which will be an attempt to project realism through the medium of grotesque fantasy. The story is a satirical attempt to show up hero worship and judicial methods in America.

THE Philadelphia Amateur Motion Picture Club held its annual banquet recently at the Adelphia Hotel. Preceding the banquet, the club elected the following officers:

John T. Collin, president; William Burke, vice-president; and W. L. Holmes, secretary and treasurer.

FOTO-CINE PRODUCTIONS of Stockton, Calif., has under way a citywide amateur movie contest. It opened on July 1st. This club entered four films in Photoplay's two contests, for amateur movie makers, notably, "Three Episodes," which was a prominent contender in the competition now closed.