Documentary News Letter (1942-1943)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER MAY 1942 SCIENTIFIC FILM SOCIETIES The increasing strain of ei\il defence dunes has in no way lessened the interest taken in the scientific films shown during the third session by the Aberdeen Scientific Film Club. True, membership this year was not quite as large as in the preceding session, but this can be accounted for almost entirely by the shift of personnel due to war conditions. The greatest difficulties encountered were in getting first class talkie films. The club started offby showing programmes of the best films which could be procured, without any padding from comedy or historical films, with the consequence that the curtailed supply was to a certain extent reflected in the programmes presented. Nevertheless the marks awarded by the audiences, who are trenchant critics, seldom fell below seventy per cent on the average. How long this can be maintained is a question not for the club promoters but for the film producers. The effect of mechanised warfare, and an appreciation of the significance of machines, has evolved an audience which will absorb films like Distillation and Hydraulics with relish, but will display only passing interest in pseudo-biological films. Real teaching and information take precedence every time over anything which savours of "talking down to the audience". At the forthcoming Conference on the Scientific Film the Club will be represented by Dr. Archibald Clow, lecturer in Chemistry in the University. One of the things which it is hoped will come out of this Conference is the realization that the film is an excellent medium for the presentation of experimental set-ups, which are expensive and from which nothing is gained by having to prepare the material at, say, yearly intervals, for presentation to a fresh audience or race of students. Industry, too, is an almost unexplored field for good films explanatory of industrial processes. If the fractionation of oil can be made interesting and intelligible by a film like Distillation, what is to prevent us having a series of similar films illustrative of industry as a whole? The youth of practically every community has in its neighbourhood a selective industrial environment, and has little opportunity of learning about industry as a a whole. If we are to have a planned economy, it is just as important for the London youth to know about the quarrying of the Aberdeen granite, of which the Embankment is built, as for the Aberdeen youth to appreciate the significance of Portland cement. The London Scientific Film Society held the fourth and final performance of the season on May lfuh in the Imperial Institute Cinema, when the programme included This is Colour, Imperial Chemical Industry's new technicolor film on dyes; Boulder Dam, the United States Government's record of the Colorado River project, ami (ialapagos, Dartington Hall Film Unit's famous document on animal evolution, the production of which was assisted by the Zoological Society. A commentary to the last film was spoken by Dr. Julian Huxley who answered a number of good questions from a lively audience. This has probably been the Society's most successful season since its inception. MAY 1st, '41MAY 1st, '42 FIVE MINUTERS Visit from Canada News Train Victory Over Darkness Filling The Gap Work Party NON-THEATRICALS (1 Reel) Living With Strangers When The Pie Was Opened Canadian Fighters Cultivation Storing Vegetahles Indoors Storing Vegetahles Outdoors Compost Heap Hedging Ditching Good Value Canada in Londo SPECIALS Plastic Surgery in Wartime (Three Reels Technicolor) Plastic Surgery (Supplement 1 Reel) Goodbye Yesterday (2 Reels) The Han est Shall Come (4 Reels) REALIST FILM I Ml 17 OXFORD STR E ET, W. 1 Telephone: GERRARD 1958