The People’s Commissariat of Education must establish oversight over all film screenings and systematically organize this work. All motion pictures shown in the RSFSR must be registered and assigned a unique identification number at the People’s Commissariat of Education. For each film program, a specific ratio must be established:

a) entertainment films, intended specifically for promotional purposes and for generating revenue (of course, free from obscenity and counterrevolutionary content), and

b) under the banner “From the Life of the Peoples of All Nations” — films with explicitly propagandistic content, such as: Britain’s colonial policies in India, the activities of the League of Nations,
the famine-stricken streets of Berlin, and so on and so forth. It is not enough to show mere films; we must also present compelling photographs accompanied by appropriate captions, ideally suited for propaganda purposes. We must ensure that privately owned cinemas generate sufficient revenue for the state in the form of rental income, while granting entrepreneurs the right to increase the number of screening rooms and introduce new ones—provided, however, that these new venues are subject to the strict censorship of the People’s Commissariat of Education and that the prescribed ratio between entertainment films and films of a propagandistic nature, designated “From the Life of the Peoples of All Nations,” is maintained. In this way, industrialists will be incentivized to create and produce new films, and within these parameters they should be afforded broad latitude for creative initiative. Films of a propagandistic and educational nature must be submitted for review

DIRECTIVES ON CINEMATOGRAPHY
to veteran Marxists and literary figures, so that we may avoid the recurring tragic incidents in which propaganda ends up achieving precisely the opposite of its intended goals. Special attention should be given to organizing cinemas in rural areas and in the East, where such institutions are still relatively novel—and where, therefore, our propaganda efforts are likely to prove especially effective.
Issued on January 17, 1922.
First published in 1925 in the journal Kino Nedelya, No. 4.

Printed from a record by N. P. Gorbunov (typewritten copy).