The film, Tourism in Our Lives, failed to meet its objective of inspiring people, the chairman of a tourism organisation said.

Visitor Industry Partnership's E. Michael Jones revealed this was why the film was withdrawn from the opening of the Community Affairs Ministry's Tourism Heritage Exhibition.

He said: "The 50 minutes of unedited interviews that were shown simply failed to meet the objective of inspiring people and was therefore found to be unacceptable for the purpose for which it was intended.'' It emerged late Wednesday night that the film was pulled from its scheduled showing after Tourism director Gary Phillips viewed it on behalf of the Visitor Industry Partnership last Monday and did not approve of it.

The film was also due to be shown last night on VSB television but was cancelled and the Ministry of Community and Cultural Affairs were expected to screen the film on Thursday during an emergency meeting.

Mr. Jones said the VIP were asked to financially support the production of a video to be used as part of the exhibition and agreed as it believed the project was consistent with its purpose.

This purpose was "to inspire the people of Bermuda to work together and make a commitment to revitalise the Visitor Industry to be globally competitive in the 21st Century''.

However Mr. Jones said the video, while well executed, "could in no way, in the view of all present, be used to inspire anyone''.

"What we viewed was a series of on location or on the street interviews, which, in our collective opinion -- and not only that of the Director of Tourism -- presented in a very large measure only the challenges facing the industry. There was, therefore, an imbalance that the committee was not prepared to accept.'' The video was produced by local film maker Bill Madden who declined to comment on the matter when contacted.