When the Wellington Film Society celebrated its 21st anniversary towards the end of 1966, it had been hoped that the founder, Gordon Mirams, would be present for the occasion. He died just a week before the celebration.

When once asked how he became a film critic, Gordon replied; "Mostly by accident. The initial cause was threefold. In the first place, on joining the reporting staff of The Sun in Christchurch at the age of about nineteen, I had been strongly advised by a senior reporter, who knew what he was talking about, to specialise in some sideline of newspaper writing, such as football, racing, farming or high finance (the movies were not mentioned and I doubt if he would have approved if they had been). In the second place, there was a girl; and the chance of frequent free seats at the pictures was therefore specially inviting. And in the third place, I had from an early age shown a marked and doubtless deplorable interest in the movies. Well, I got all the free seats I could use; I married the girl; and I became a film critic."

For two years, Gordon conducted the film page of The Sun. Honest reviewing was not known at the time, and the material was mostly 'puff' supplied by the film companies, but, Gordon claimed, it was at least attractively presented. When The Sun ceased publication, he joined the J. C. Williamson Picture Corporation as Director of Publicity, and spent two years on the inside of the film trade, learning a lot about one of the most curious and complicated commercial mechanisms of modern times.

In 1937 he returned to journalism, writing film reviews for The Dominion (under the pen-name of Roger Holden) a little more frank than anything that had appeared previously, and also for the Radio Record, which showed itself ready to fight the commercial interests in defence of genuine film criticism. The Radio Record was soon absorbed by The Listener which allowed Gordon a completely free hand in his weekly film reviews. The film page, called "Speaking Candidly", became widely known to discriminating filmgoers throughout the country, and helped to form what John O'Shea has called 'an attitude to films'. Each review was accompanied by a line drawing of a little man expressing his reaction - standing up to clap, clapping sitting dovwn, just sitting, slumped in his seat, or walking out; and, as time went on, the little man was sometimes accompanied by his little boy. This system of visual grading (immeasurably superior to the barometers or nearly-invisible stars that The Listener has used since Gordon left) is remembered with affection by those who followed the reviews. But the reviews themselves were more important. They took the cinerma seriously as an art, and created an interest in and an appreciation of films among a wide public.

Gordon also began lecturing on the film for the Workers' Educational Association, and published his eminently readable book, Speaking Candidly: fims and people in New Zealand, and out of this activity came the foundation of the Wellington Film Society in 1945, with Gordon as its first President, which marked the beginning of the Film Society movement in New Zealand. Two years later he was largely responsible for the foundation of the New Zealand Federation of Film Societies (known originally as the New Zealand Film Institute).

In 1947, Gordon took up a post with UNESCO in Paris, that of first assistant film information officer in the Mass Media Division, and ceased his active participation in Film Society affairs. In 1949 he returned to New Zealand and the position of Censor of Cinematograph Films - one of the happiest choices of a public official that a government has made. He served ten years as Censor and, before his tenure of office was finished, he had secured the amendments to the legislation which introduced the present wide range of certificates - solving the difficult problem of protecting children and young people as well as safeguarding the rights of mature adults.

In 1959 Gordon accepted an appointment to the permanant staff of UNESCO in Paris. Again with the Mass Media Division, he worked on the development of education and entertainment programmes for children on television. One of his main projects was the development of methods of screen education in schools and colleges. Ill health entually led to his resignation and his return to New Zealand.

Many tributes have been paid to Gordon in the months since his death. F.A.J., one of his successors in the film critic's chair at The Listener office, wrote: "It was New Zealand's great good fortune that the man who gave us this attitude was not just a film enthiusiast; he was also Citizen Mirams, a man with a social conscience and deep humanitarian convictions. Without this social conscience his value as a critic would have been less, and he could not have done the good work he later did as Government Film Censor and as an international public servant, still among films, at UNESCO, in Paris." John O'Shea, who worked with Gordon in the Censor's office, wrote: "By his death New Zealand loses an eminent international public servant who, after translating into the laws of his own country the ideals he respected, was able to work effectively on the world scene for the views on peace and international understanding which he personally cherished`.

The Wellington Film Society, in a special way, mourns the passing of the man who made its own existence possible.

-Sequence March 1967.