When you’re from a country like Guyana, where more than 50 per cent, or the majority of such media is imported anyway, both those who offer such programmes and those who view them, are compelled to decide what is good and beneficial to their country’s social lifestyle on the whole.

What is the purpose of looking at any programme, apart from just passing time, unless it offers some positive solution, however small, to our everyday problems? But in actual fact, such media has the immediate effect of encouraging gullible minds to copy, or `follow pattern’ what they see without critical thought. Who knows why? Perhaps some people feel everything they see flashing on a screen was intended for them, when, in fact, such images come from very far away from their everyday environments and reality, and are merely being shown to them as customers who feel inferior to lifestyles originating in wealthier, or more technically advanced societies?

The truth that should be borne in mind, however, is that such nations and developed societies have qualities that are both positive and negative, and it is up to us to know which is which.

This is the reason why film and TV media in Guyana can only be a positive asset to the nation and society if we keep our eyes and ears focused on products which can achieve such a painless objective.

It would be misleading and quite silly indeed for Guyanese, whether Black, Oriental, White, or Mixed, to see films or TV programmes from any other area whether North and South America, India, Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, etc., and include themselves in the same negative and dangerous circumstances they may see there. The same applies to others who see similar images of us. Whatever we identify with, we can become, whether negatively or positively.

For example, the concept of `ghettoes’ or `project housing’, defined by big cities abroad and seen by local Guyanese only through the film and TV media, is not similar or comparable to life in the Guyanese communities of D’Urban Street, Albouystown, Kitty, Buxton, Annandale, Linden, Corriverton, Vreed-en-Hoop, Bartica, etc. And those Guyanese returning from big city `ghettoes’ would be quite sensible not to import that same life here.

What defines Guyana’s communities from those of the big industrialised cities is the indelible reality that ours is a purely tropical economy based mostly on agricultural and mineral products, civil servant jobs, various professional social skills, and a mercantile business class. These are the fundamentals of local Guyanese life.

Are there films and TV programmes from abroad (if not locally made as yet) which are relevant to such fundamentals? Certainly. Those in the film and TV business in Guyana should therefore do some research before unleashing any film or TV programme on the public, simply because it is easily available.

Those who think offering the public any type of film or TV programme is harmless and simply `business’, are seriously deluded. There is a certain special pleasure in seeing films which bear some resemblance to the national and social lifestyle one knows, whether in a historical sense, or genuine local sense.

American films like `They drive by night’ with Humphrey Bogart and George Raft, `The Big Country’ with Gregory Peck and Charleston Heston, `The Unforgiven’ with Burt Lancaster and Audie Murphy, `The Key’ with Sophia Loren, `Sounder’ with Cicely Tyson, `River Lady’ with Rhonda Fleming, `Hud’ with Paul Newman, etc. or British films like `This Sporting Life’ with Richard Harris, `Saturday Night and Sunday morning’ with Albert Finney, `The Servant’ with Dirk Bogarde, `Darling’ with Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey, etc; profoundly social films of historical injustice such as `Spartacus’ with Kirk Douglas, and `The Robe’ with Richard Burton and Victor Mature, or French films (with English sub-titles) like `Danton’ and `Germinal’ both with Gerrard Depardieu, `That man from Rio’ with Jean Paul Belmondo, are films every literate Guyanese should get to know.

There are thousands of such films of relevance to life in Guyana that are on video and on reel in the film studios of Hollywood and elsewhere. Fans prefer to see these films as they really should be seen on reel on the big screens of cinemas, or auditoriums with large screens. Because it is a treat to see such outstanding films on cinema screens where they can be absorbed properly for their true worth, special membership fees are given to organisations providing such films, and members pay around Cdn$5 or Cdn$9 at the door if one is not a member.

Such programmes should be put in place in Guyana, and a fee of $500 is fair to ensure serious fans attend, and to make up for the absence of those who care nothing for older masterpiece movies. Our cinemas should reintroduce at least one day and night a week for such films, whose rental may not be as easy as the rental of those forgettable and mediocre new films which plague our society today, and rarely have any relevance or meaning to our local lives.

As long as cinemas in Guyana are only `hanging on’ to business, rather than pursuing new and innovative business methods and unusual film programmes, the cinema business here will die, slowly, but surely. This will never happen abroad in more sensible countries, whether the USA, Canada, Europe or elsewhere, who know that big screens can never be only for new movies, but for all movies, past and present.