Film year book : 1922-23 (1923)

stripes, and that answer consists chiefly of one word — Liberty. The motion picture business objects to political censorship for one great reason, because the motion picture business is an American. Political censorship drove the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock; political censorship faced the Minute Men at Concord; political censorship caused the Boston Tea Party; in this new effort to control politically this great method of expression Massachusetts took a characteristically splendid American position. There is one place and one place only where any evils in motion pictures can be eliminated and the good and great advantages retained, and that is at the point where and the time when the pictures are made, by the men who make them. Raising the Standards With the raising of the moral and artistic standard comes with greater ease the development of the educational value of the motion picture. It must be and is the earnest purpose of the industry to strive with renewed effort continually to make presentations historically correct and to give authentic portrayals of customs, costumes, and habits. In addition to the general educational value of entertainment pictures we are concerned, of course, with two additional phases; first, the pedagogic pictures, and then the picture which is semi-educational and semi-entertaining. I am very sure that soon there will be series of motion pictures adopted by boards of education just as new series of text books are adopted. They must be, of course, scientifically, psychologically and pedagogically sound. It has been my hope that we might immediately make some progress in this direction and we have been working to that end. At the annual convention of the National Education Association this summer in Boston, I suggested on behalf of our Association to some 3,000 teachers who were there representing a membership in their organization alone of more than 115,000, that we jointly study the demand for pedagogic pictures, and that we turn over to them all of our facilities to aid in the experimentation. I suggested that a committee be appointed by their association made up of the very best educators in the country, and that they meet with the great producers and together study the whole problem of the use of the motion picture as a direct pedagogic instrument and together find the means of making classroom pictures which would be scientifically, psychologically and pedagogically sound, thereby being able to take care of the demand which now obtains, but also of the great demand which is imminent and which will certainly come and which must be met, and met by the producers with a supply that measures up to the ideas of the educators of the country. This offer was accepted by that convention, a committee was ordered appointed, a committee has been appointed, consisting in addition to Dr. Wm. B Owen, President of the National Education Association, of the following: Dr. Charles H. Judd, University of Chicago, Chairman; Col. Leonard P. Ayres, Cleveland Trust Company, Cleveland, Ohio; Elizabeth Breckinridge, Principal, Louisville Normal School, Louisville, Kentucky; Ernest L. Crandall, (Director of Visual Education, N. Y. Board of Education), New York City; Susan M. Dorsay, Superintendent of Schools, Los Angeles, California; Elizabeth Hall, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Payson Smith, Commissioner of Education, Massachusetts. Affiliated with this committee will be the Commissioner of Education, Dr. J. J. Tigert and Dr. J. D. Creeden, President of Georgetown University. The preliminary meetings have already been held with the Commissioner of Education and Dr. Owen, surveys are now being made and preliminary organization perfected, and a joint mv^eting will be held soon. Non-Theatrical Field His Hobby The non-theatrical demand and supply is one of the big questions. Personally, it is a hobby with me, and from the time this work was first brought to my attention until now I have urged constantly, both in public and in private, that there will be films in churches and schools everywhere. I believe this, and very much, indeed, has been done in the last six months toward developing a demand in this field. As I said in a speech at Boston before the National Education Association: "The^ problem which faces all of us is to provide some plan of cooperation which will provide film material for instructional use in schools and colleges, and suitable films for churches and welfare organizations— some plan which will secure the active cooperation of theater owners and public leaders, and which will safeguard against harmful competition between nontheatrical and theatrical groups. These matters, which are merely incident to the youth and tremendous expansion of the business, can be worked out satisfactorily without question." The problem of semi-religious and semi-educational films is not so extensive as that of pedagogic films, but is much more difficult. Every one is for pedagogic films in the classroom and, of coyrse, there is no objection to purely religious films in the churches. The matter, therefore, of pedagogic films and purely religious films presents no problem save only the problem of providing an organ