CHINA 5/27/46 CONCERTO IN CHINESE * When China's No. 1 musician was nine years old, his parents packed Ma Si-tson off to the Paris Conservatory. Nine years later, he returned to teach at Nanking, organize Chungking's first symphony orchestra and become China's best violinist. During the war Ma escaped with his wife from Hong Kong to the village of Ping-shih, where he taught at the exiled Sun Yat-sen University. There he began to compose China's first concerto. Last week Ma, now 33, heard the first performance of his Violin Concerto in F Major by the Shanghai Municipal Symphony Orchestra. The musicians were white Russians and Italian and German refugees who have grudgingly admitted only one Chinese as violinist. He is Ma Si-hon, 22, the composer's brother. Ma Si-tson's next project: The Inferno, a symphony that will depict "all the sadness ... which happened in these war years." THE EMPEROR'S NEW SHOWS: JAPAN'S TV DRAMASINDIA JAPAN 7/28/58 LAND OF THE RISING PLUG * One recent evening, Japanese at their 14-in. TV screens watched breathlessly as a topknotted samurai disarmed his opponent after some ferocious swordplay. The cowering loser awaited the death thrust; instead the victor tossed him a bottle of tranquilizer pills, shouted the manufacturer's name and advised, "If you took these regularly, you wouldn't get into such a fix." This method of building the commercial into the drama is the most distinctive feature of television in Japan, a nation rapidly becoming as TV-obsessed as the U.S. Japan now has 1,400,000 sets in operation. There are quiz shows, broadcasts of baseball games and many imported U.S. film series (Emperor Hirohito's favorite program is "Superman"). Viewers who want no part of commercials can tune in to 19 government-run stations, which operate on the lines of Britain's BBC. INDIA 1/5/59 CINEMATIC MONTAGE * The Indian movie industry, centered in Bombay, is a montage of pomp, profit and speculation. The size of the market is fantastic: 730 million annual Indian moviegoers. But Bombay also has trouble: a severe star shortage. For all its 20 studios, which make some 300 pictures yearly (in 19 Indian languages), there are only 12 top stars. They work in an many as 15 movies simultaneously, dashing from studio to studio in limousines. To launch a venture, a producer consults his astrologer and then bribes top stars to work for him. He dreams up a title but does not bother about a script; dialogue is usually written just before each day's shooting. Favorite subjects are musicals, "mythologicals," adventures. Educated Indians huffily pride themselves on never seeing an Indian movie. With the exception of a few original moviemakers like director Satyajit Ray ("Pather Panchali"), the Indian movie business is likely to go on pandering to more undemanding millions than Hollywood ever envisioned. | CONTENT |