Consider this posting a late obituary for a great archivist of film, Sam Kula ( Montreal 1923 -Ottawa, September 8, 2010). He was head of the National Film, Television and Sound archives at the Canadian National Archives in 1973, a post he held until 1989.
Once when I mentioned a quote attributed to M.K.Ataturk on cinema, Sam pointed to a close resemblance of a saying by Lenin. When I prepared a small poster with English, French and German translations for the 90th anniversary of Turkish Cinema, I called Kula on the phone and asked for this reference. Sam said that it must be in the collected works but he would not be able to find it. Here is the story so far 3 years after his passing. I still remember him as a great film archivist who twisted the arm of Canadian Air Force to save the Dawson Find. Thank you Sam.
The provenance (beyond a mention by Cemil Filmer [*]) of this effectively worded saying on cinema by the founder of the Turkish Republic, is still undocumented and the search is ongoing.
[*] Hatıralar:Türk sinemasında 65 yıl. Cemil Filmer. Emek Matbaacılık ve İlâncılık, 1984
Mavi Boncuk |
Из всех искусств важнейшим для нас является кино.
Lenin
You are known among us as a protector of the arts so you must remember that, of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important.
Conversation with A.V.Lunacharsky (April 1919)[1]; also quoted in A Concise History of the Cinema: Before 1940 (1971) by Peter Cowie, p. 137, Complete Works of V.I.Lenin - 5th Edition - Vol. 44. - p. 579
[1] In a conversation, with A. V. Lunacharsky in February 1922 Lenin “once more stressed the necessity of establishing a definite proportion between entertainment films and scientific films”. Vladimir Ilyich, Lunacharsky writes in his reminiscences, said that the production of new films imbued with communist ideas and reflecting Soviet realities should be started with newsreel, since, in his opinion, the time had not yet come for the production of such films. “If you have a good newsreel, serious and enlightening pictures, it doesn’t really matter if you show some worthless film with them of a more or less usual type to attract the public. A censorship, of course, will be needed. Counter-revolutionary and immoral films should be barred.” To this Lenin added: “As you find your feet, what with proper handling of the business, and receive certain loans to carry on, depending on the general improvement in the country’s position, you will have to expand production, and particularly make headway with useful films among the masses in the cities, and still more in the countryside.... You must remember always that of all the arts the most important for us is the cinema” (Sovietskoye Kino No. 1-2, 1933, p. 10).
See also: V. I. Lenin Directives on the Film Business Dictated: Dictated January 17, 1922 Published: First published in 1925 in the magazine Kinonedelya No. 4. Printed from the notes of N. P. Gorbunov (typewritten copy). Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 42, pages 388b-389a.