Motography (Apr-Dec 1911)

240 MOTOGRAPHY Vol. VI, No. 5. Pictures Among the Savages In any moving picture theater one may, for five cents, visit the wild African jungle and the frozen mountains of Alaska, all in the course of a half hour. The film has taken us on trips far away from civilization, and has shown us the rude huts of savages and has taught us something about the manners and customs of our half wild brothers, men who have not yet come into the inheritance and knowledge of wisdom and civilization. It is marvelous what the moving picture has taught us; and yet scarcely less wonderful has been the work of the moving picture show in revealing to the people of the Orient the manners and customs of the newer order of civilization of the Occident. So highly was this service appreciated that the moving picture sprang into instant popularity among nearly all of the more enlightened peoples of the great Asiatic continent. In the Philippines, as has been related, the moving picture was successfully utilized b3^ American teachers to convince the savage Igorotes that it would be to their physical and material advantage to accept a measure of the obligations and responsibilities of the civilized social order. A Chicago publisher who led an expedition into the central African jungles tells an interesting tale of the moving picture and its effect upon primitive man. He had a complete moving picture apparatus, including gas tanks for furnishing sufficient light to project the pictures. He and his party made friends with the inhabitants of a Negro village and one pitchblack night the village chief and his subjects accepted an invitation to come to a moving picture show in an improvised "air dome." The Chicago man, anticipating an interesting event, put up captive balloons, each with a camera attached, the camera pointing toward the canvas screen that had been erected for the moving pictures. Three of these balloon-cameras were connected with one switch, and two with another, the whole being' so arranged that, with the aid of a dry battery, turning the switch would not only open the shutters of the camera but set off a large quantity of flash-light powder. Some two hundred villagers assembled before the screen and the operator showed them reel alter reel of films depicting life in the western world. Steamships, railways, street scenes in New York, wheat fields in Dakota, soldiers on the march, and the like. Awe-stricken the savages drank in this knowledge of a world, that theretofore had been to them an impenetrable mystery. Then they were given some knockabout, slap-stick comedy and it is asserted that they enjoyed it just as much as the "tired business man," to whom the American theaters cater, enjoys similar entertainment. When nearly all of the reels in stock had been exhausted, the host turned a switch and touched off the flash-lights of three cameras. Two hundred mighty screams escaped two hundred frightened throats, and then the host turned on the two remaining cameras. Two of the negatives when developed were good pictures, one of the first set showing the people gazing iii open-mouthed astonishment at the pictures on the screen, the second showing them every man with his face buried in the dust, praying for mercy and apparently believing that the end of the world had come. The Japanese as Exibitors It is not surprising that the Japanese should have been among the first to take up the business of producing and exhibiting moving pictures. Long ago the Japanese had placed themselves in the front ranks of the photographic world, and the moving picture film presented no difficulties that they could not overcome. Then, too, they were not very seriously hampered by patent laws as were the inhabitants of some other countries. It is characteristic of the Japanese that they were the first people in the world to recognize the political possibilities of the moving picture. Under the protection of the Japanese government, Japanese moving picture exhibitions were taken into China, India and other Asiatic countries. These traveling exhibitors showed pictures of Japanese troops overwhelming and routing the Russians, representing them as bona fide pictures of actual incidents of the war. Everyone of these pictures taught a lesson — the lesson that the white-skinned European at last had fallen before the yellow-skinned Asiatic. The influence of these pictures was so marked that, although it was done very quietly, their further exhibition was practically prohibited by the British government in India. The moving picture show in Peking sustains the same relation to life in the Chinese capital that the Royal Opera House in Berlin does to that of the Prussian metropolis. Obeying the mandates of the custom religiously observed for centuries upon centuries, Chinese women of the higher social classes never have been permitted to appear unveiled in public. One of the most eminent councillors of the Chinese Emperor, a man known as the conservative of conservatives, went to the Peking moving picture theater and instantly became a "fan." He went night after night, and finally disregarding all conventions and endangering his social and political future, he took his wife and daughter, unveiled, to the moving picture show. It marked the beginning of a new era for Chinese women of the upper official classes in Peking. Pictures in Politics The republican candidate for governor of Kentucky is giving effectiveness to his canvass of the mountain districts by exhibiting moving pictures and streopticon views where they have never before been seen. The mountain folk are riding miles over rough roads to get sight of a form of entertainment novel to most of them and calculated to add a new flavor to political oratory. It is an artful campaign device. In effect the voters of the remote feud regions are being treated to the latest methods of city campaigning, and the fact has its interest as illustrating the progress of the moving picture. It has perhaps greater interest in its educational significance. The candidate who has carried the cinematograph into the Kentucky mountains has introduced a civilizing agency that may accomplish a definite amount of uplift among isolated people. Moving pictures undeniably contain possibilities of good, and they ought to prove an excellent medium for bringing a backward and primitive community into touch with the rest of the world. The Kentucky candidate with his moving picture apparatus has perhaps done more than he expected to do.