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The History of Cinema: 1951

Australia - Italy

Australia

– The Australian federal Capital Issues Board forbids the formation of new film production companies with capital exceeding £10,000. [ADD]

Austria

– The Metro Cinema, a former theatre, opens. [ADD]

Belgium

– Le Banquet des fraudeurs, Henri Storck’s first feature, and the first Belgian post-war international co-production, is released. [ADD]

Bulgaria

19/2 -

Zahari Zhandov’s Trevoga (Alarm), the first film fully produced at Boyana Film since the industry’s nationalisation in 1948, is released. [ADD]

China

30/6 -

The People’s Daily, under the personal supervision of Mao Tse-Tung launches a campaign attacking Sun Yu’s Wu Xun zhuan (The Life of Wu Xun) as part of a programme of ideological purification. [ADD]

– Pre-1949 Chinese films, and films from Hollywood and Hong Kong are banned as the communist government tightens control of the media. [ADD]

Czechoslovakia

26/1 -

Jiri Trnka's animated feature film Bajaja (The Princess Bayaya), based on an old folk tale, is released. [ADD]

29/7 -

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival concludes with the awarding of First Prize to Yuri Raizman's Kavalier zolotoy zvezdy (Dream of a Cossack). [ADD]

Egypt

19/11 -

Salah Abouseif's film Lak yum ya zalim (Your Day Will Come), which is a loose adaptation of Emile Zola's novel Thèrese Raquin, is released. [ADD]

West Germany

18/1 -

The first nude scene in a mainstream German film appears in Die Sünderin (The Sinner).   Hildegard Knef is the actress who disrobes. [ADD]

Mar -

The Bundestag approves the principle of deficit guarantees favouring film production in West Germany. [ADD]

May -

Fritz Falter opens the Occam Cinema (Studio für Filmkunst/Studio for Film Art) in Munich, the country’s first repertoire cinema. [ADD]

6/6 -

The first Berlin Film Festival, instigated by Dr Alfred Bauer, takes place.   Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca is the first film to be shown. [ADD]

20/8 -

The Film Evaluation Board is established.   Films awarded a ‘valuable’ or ‘especially valuable’ grade receive tax relief from the government. [ADD]

– The first German Filmpreis is awarded by the Federal Minister of the Interior. [ADD]

Ghana

– The first Ghanaian feature film, Sean Graham’s Boy Kumasenu, is released. [ADD]

Gilbert Islands (Kiribati)

Dec -

The Maria Cinema in Betio, the island’s first, is opened by local businessmen Henry Schutz and Phillip Wilder. [ADD]

Greece

– Grigoris Grigoriou’s neo-realist drama Pikro pisomi (Bitter Bread), is released. [ADD]

India

– The SK Patil Film Enquiry Committee report notes a shift from the studio system to independent entrepreneurship.   It criticises the star system and proposes state funding of film production, the foundation of a film finance body, a film institute and film archive. [ADD]

– Chandulal Shah is appointed first president of the Film Federation of India (FFI). [ADD]

– The Central Board of Film Censors, with the film industry represented by B. N. Sircar, is established. [ADD]

– Russian director Vselevod Pudovkin and actor Nikolai Cherkasov meet Indian filmmakers in Bombay, Calutta and Madras. [ADD]

– Guru Dutt makes his directorial debut with Baazi (A Game of Chance), starring Dev Anand.  [ADD]

– The Indian Express Group publishes the first issue of the weekly newspaper Screen. [ADD]

Italy

May -

A two-year agreement is reached with the Motion Picture Export Association of America (MPEA) allowing eight US companies – Columbia, MGM, Paramount, Republic, RKO, Twentieth Century-Fox, United Artists and Universal – to import 60 films a year, all dubbed into Italian. [ADD]

13/7 -

A consortium of producers found the Italian Film Export company in an attempt to sell Italian films in America. [ADD]

1/9 -

At the Venice Film Festival, the Golden Lion prize is awarded to a Japanese film – Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon – for the first time. [ADD]

Other Key Films of 1951

Czechoslovakia

The Gingerbread Cottage (Bretislav Pojar) [ADD]

East Germany

Der Untertan (Man of Straw) (Wolfgang Staudte) [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1951