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YOUTH CONCERT

Plan pageant
for Champion

A PAGEANT involving ‘a cast
of 25 young people will be the
at the annual

feature attraction
Champion concert to be given in
Pender Auditorium here, Friday,
February 27. The concert, a
major fund-raising event for the
national youth paper, Champion,
is expected to draw a full house.

The pageant consists of a num-
ber of scenes “drawn right from
the. of Champion” and
dramatizing the paper’s
campaign against conscription, its
fight for the right of young people
for education, recreation and jobs.
include a cabin on

pages
youth

The scenes
Seymour; a basketball game; a
factory; an unemployed scene; the
office of Champion; and an in-
ternational youth festival.

A three-piece jazz band will
stage a jam session as part of
the cgncert program, and there
will be singers and dancers from
Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish and
Negro groups of artists.

Champion is now conducting a
national drive for $9,400 and 3,000
' subscriptions. Since it, was launch-
ed two years ago the paper has
won wide support among Can-
ada’s progressive young people.

Last year the main feature at
the concert, was the first local
presentation of the pageant, This
is Canada, which had its world
premiere in Berlin at the World
Youth Festival.

Admission to the concert is free.

‘UNDEMOCRATIC’

Arts council
hits screening

ACTION OF Rabbi Abraham
Feinberg in submitting a list of
members of the Toronto Arts
Council to “competent authorities”
has been sharply criticized by. the
council “as being undemocratic
and not in keeping with Canadian
traditions nor in the interests of
that freedom.”

Rabbi- Feinberg, who had been
a sponsor of the council, formed
to organize a conference to: seek

ways to assist young Canadian
artists in various arts, had earlier
declared ‘his opposition’ to the

witch-hunting attacks on the coun-
til launched by the Toronto Tele-
gram, the RCMP and others. Ac-
cording to-a council press release,

he wrote secretary Samuel’ Gold- *
‘berg on January 29 announcing .

“his withdrawal after first request-
ing and receiving a list of those
taing part in the council. He also
released his letter to the press.

‘Tn his letter of withdrawal, Rab-
bi Feinberg, an American citizen,
said in one paragraph that he had
come td admire “the moderation,
maturity and fair-minded passion
for individual freedom which mark
this great country. I trust they
will be preserved.” Then he said
he “took the trouble to check the
“names you submitted with compe-
_ tent authorities and am now con-
vinced that a certain proportion
“are suspected of Communist
_ sympathies.” :

In reply, Samuel Goldberg, sec-
_retary of the council, declared:

“At our meeting of February 8
‘the council unanimously deplored
‘your submisison of our names to
. ‘competent authorities’ as being
- undemocratic and not in keeping
_with Canadian traditions of free-
dom.”

_| nae wey

TOP: Abel Joe, who assisted Frank Morrison in his research for
production of Tzinquaw, is shown at left in this scene from the Cowichan
Indian Players’ operatic version of the legend of the Thunderbird and,

the Killer Whale.

BOTTOM: Mother and daughter, two of the 50

Native Indians from Cowichan who form the cast of Tzinquaw.

THREE-DAY RUN IN MARCH.

Cowichan Indian Players
to give Tzinquaw in city

ONE OF the best known Native
Indian legends of British ‘Colum-
bia will be brought to the Van-
‘couver stage next month by a
Native Indian company
Tzinquaw, the operatic version of
the Thunderbird and the Killer
Whale, is presented for a three-day
run.

Announcement that the Cowich-
an Indian: Players will stage their
production at Georgia Auditorium,
starting March 26, was made last
week by Doug Wilkinson, pub-
lisher of Indian Time.

An outstanding cultural achieve-

ment that has already excited na- :

tional attention, Tzinquaw is
unique in that it, represents the

first attempt to develop the talents

when

of the Native Indian people
around their own traditions.

Frank Morrison, the Vancouver
Island school teacher who con-
duets the Cowichan Indian Play-
ers, was not content to deplore
the lack of encouragement for
Native Indian talent. He adapt-
ed the legend, wrote the musical

score from traditional Native In- |

dian songs, organized some 50
Cowichan Indians into. a theatre
company and directed the two-
and-a-half hour production.

Presentéd to capacity audiences
in New Westminster last year,
Tzinquaw was an immediate suc-
cess.

me

ON THE SCREEN

Sound barrier conquered
but class barrier remains

A GOOD IDEA gone wrong"
lies at the heart of a new British
film, The Sound: Barrier, current-
showing around the province.

The idea is to pay a well-desery-
ed tribute to Birtish enterprise in
jet-propelled aircraft, and to com-
bine it with a popular science ex-
position of the problems to be

overcome in flying at the speed of .

sound.

So far, so good. Britain’s jet
aircraft deserve a boost. They are
far ahead of anything the U.S. has
produced. The Comet, the only
jet airliner in service in the world,
is exciting to watch.

The sound barrier, too, grips-
the imagination. Several top-rate
test pilots were killed before sci-
entists, designers and flyers mas-
tered the special problems involy-
ed in flying faster than the speed

.of sound,

The scenes in the film of test
pilots deliberately putting jet
planes into 700-m.p.h. dives to see
what happened when the speed of
sound was reached are among the

' most tense and genuinely exciting

seen on any screen in recent years.

Unfortunately even a film made
under the eye of the Society of
British Aircraft Constructors,
which watches the interests of the
hig aircraft firms, cannot remain
airborne throughout.

* we *

IT IS WHEN it comes to earth
that the good idea goes badly off
course. bs

For when they are not actually
flying, the heroes of the jet age
turn out, to be the inane cliche-
ridden public school types who, by
British film conventions, have a
monopoly of patriotism and cour-
age.

Their conversation and personal
relations far from being jet-propel-
led, lumber along the pedestrian:
path trodden by countless decent,
articulate chaps and jolly fine
girls in British stories of the mid-
dle class for the past 20 years and:
more. ;

The’ aircraft manufacturers
have not been content to lend
their planes. They have given the
film their propaganda line as well,
and this is much less handsome
and admirable than the Comet.

Did you think millionaire air-
craft manufacturers were in busi-
ness-to make money and were bit-
terly opposed to nationalisation ?
Here’s Ralph Richardson as the
owner of two aircraft factories to
show you how wrong you were.

He runs his factories and be-
comes a millionaire twice over just
because he is keen on flying. What
keeps him and-his designers Bash-
ing away at the sound barrier is
not the profit to be made out of
government contracts for jet
fighters, but a sense of destiny, a
spirit of excelsior. :

You might also suppose that
when a successful new plane is
launched ‘some credit should right-
ly go not only to the people who
designed it and flew it, but also to
the workers who built it.

Terence Rattigan, who wrote
the script, and. director David
Lean, do not see it that way. Not
one worker in this film has a
speaking part.

Workers troop in and out of

, Sheds, stand in the background,

shade.eyes with horny hands and
gaze with awe. You never’ see
them Uworking: you never hear
them praised.

The only direct reference to
them comes when the white-hair-
ed, kindly chief designer stops be-
ing kindly long enough to sneer,
“IT wish I worked union hours,”
when he sees them knocking off.

‘He would no doubt be a better de-

signer if he did. |

The sound barrier is conquered,
but the class barrier remains. And
here the film nose-dives wildly out
of control.

ao, * *

IN WALT DISNEY’s hands
Robin Hood js transformed from
the swashbuckling outlaw who
robbed the rich to help the poor
into a boy scout who robs the rick
to help pay the King’s ransom.

Richard Todd, as Robin, and

‘young Joan Rice, as Maid Marion,

are made to behave toward each
other at times like a couple of
American college kids. :

_ And James Hayter, as Friar”
Tuck, contrives to look and act

exactly like a Disney cartoon
character.
Disney has given this well

thumbed English legend a_ shiny
gloss which effectively removes
most of: the qualities which have
caused it to endure,

CEASE
FIRE
KOREA.
‘NOW!

Hear

DR. JAMES:

e

Exhibition Gardens.

Sunday, February 22
8 p.m.
ADMISSION
FREE!

Also at
WHITE ROCK. - Feb. 23
TRAIL - Feb. 25.
B.C. Peace Council

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 20, 1953 — PAGE 8