Documentary News Letter (1940)

. DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER FEBRUARY 1940 BRITISH DOCUMENTARY ACTIVITY THE NEW YEAR secs the British documentary people busier than they have been for the past six months. Film Centre is drawing up a general report — from a film point of view — on the changes brought about in social living in Great Britain by the war — and, as part of the report, is preparing detailed scenarios, with research memoranda, on four social subjects. Three of these, and the personnel now working on each, are : Evacuation (Basil Wright and Paul Fletcher), The Preservation of Cultural Life (Arthur Elton and Stanley Hawes), and Food Problems: Rationing and Nutrition (Edgar Anstey, R. I. Grierson and Ralph Bond). The fourth subject is not yet fixed but consideration is being given to Public Opinion (Paul Rotha and Donald Alexander). This project is being carried out in cooperation with P.E.P. This is one of the most comprehensive and carefully planned projects for documenting life in film terms yet undertaken. Most of the films commissioned last October by the British Council are either finished or are nearing show-copies. They are the G.P.O. Film Unit's S.S. Ionian by Humphrey Jennings ; Realist Film Unit's film of British life by John Taylor and Philip Leacock; British Films' London River; a Len Lye colour abstract; G.B. Instructional's British Empire Round Atlantic, by Mary Field, and On Guard in the Air by Bruce Woolfe; Strand Films' These Children Are Safe by Alex Shaw; two from Paramount, Britain Shoulders Arms and Royal Review; two from British Movietone, Women in Wartime and IVar Comes to London; and Thoroughbred, a film about horses, by Pathe. Each film has 'oeen designed primarily for overseas distribution. Publicity Films report that Montgomery Tully has just finished Circus, a film for the National Savings Committee, and a film for the Ford Motor Company about Dagenham. Also in hand at Merton Park Studios is a film dealing with the National Register. John Lewis is doing a film for Cadbury on food rationing and Tully has started out on a film dealing with industrial machinery behind the war. British Colloids have commissioned a technical film from Publicity Films. Another item in the Merton Park schedule is a film on the manufacture of liquid oxygen. Cecil Musk continues in charge of all production. The G.P.O. Film Unit reports that Harry Watt's Balloon Barrage is finished and that the whole Unit is working on a munitions subject. Realist Film Unit hopes to have Rotha's "The Times" film. The Thunderer, ready by the middle of February ; Walter Leigh is writing the music with Constant Lambert conducting the Sadlers Wells Theatre Orchestra. At G.B. Instructional, Mary Field is now engaged on a series of four films for the National Federation of Women's Institutes. She has also completed, for theatrical release. Babes in the Wood, a film about young animals ; Valley of the Sun, a film of the River Douro ; and Men Against Mountains, which deals with afforestation. Science Films have in hand Government work of a confidential kind. From Spectator Films will come at least two new Points of View, "Is Efficiency a Vice?" and "Is Craftsmanship Better than Mass-Production?" The Shell Film Unit has Cinemagazine No. 4 ready, is working on a film about Fuel Oil and is making versions of eleven films in Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish. March of Time states that one of its units is joining the B.E.F. in France. During the month two films, The Gift of Health and Sport at the Local, have been made by a new unit, Cameo Films, directed by James Carr and photographed by Robert Gee. A. P. Herbert comments the pub one. DOCUMENTARY IN THE UNITED STATES Pare Lorentz' success with The Plow and The River well earned the promotion of his outfit. It is now the U.S. Film Service with a governmental production programme line-up. Congress has not yet made an appropriation to cover the distribution activities of the Service but meanwhile the cameras are turning. Lorentz himself has two films in production. Behold the Man is about unemployment in America. It has already had a radio production by the Columbia Workshop in America and by the B.B.C. in England. From the radio versions we judge that it marks yet another step forward for Lorentz, with dialogue and characterisation more intimate than anything in The Plow or The River. His other film is based on Paul de Kruif 's Fight for Life, and deals with the Chicago Maternity Center. Joris Ivens is back from Ohio with most of the footage for his rural electrification film, to be called Power in the Land. The fourth film in the U.S. Film Service list is one for the AAA and is ■ being directed by Robert Flaherty. Flaherty is in the Middle West and if we know anything his cameras will be grinding to some purpose. * * * Design for Living sounds like Noel Coward but this time it is another design and another way of life: it is the title of Willard van Dyke's 16 mm. two-reeler on one of New York's progressive girls' colleges. The film has been sponsored by the Alumnae Association of the Sarah Lawrence jCollege to show the advantages of the progressive leducation which the school provides. * * * , Films is a new quarterly devoted to the dis'jCussion and analysis of the cinema. It deals ..mainly with the aesthetics of films and most of the contributors to the first issue are technicians. Mainly they talk of practice but there is also theoretical discussion and two scenarios are reprinted. Leading articles are The Cinematised Child by Edgar Dale, and Sound in Films by Alberto Cavalcanti. Kurt London writes on Film Music of the Quarter and Richard Griffith on Films at the World's Fair. The editorial board is headed by Jay Leyda, whose articles in Cinema Quarterly and World Film News will be remembered. Films is issued by Kamin Publishers, 15 West 56th Street, New York City, and costs two dollars per annum. * * * The Association of School Film Libraries acts as agent and headquarters for the hundreds of regional, state, university and school film libraries throughout the U.S. and the first volume of its revised catalogue represents a fair offering at the end of one year's working. One item catches our eye. Listed for the first time and not available elsewhere to educational organisations are ten March of Time subjects, including Maginot Line and Nazi Germany, some on U.S. services such as coastguards and one or two on social problems like Prison Reform and Refugees. These are a notable addition to the nontheatrical films of America and their use in schools and colleges is already providing the basis of thoughtful discussion. * * * American Film Center has just issued a circular recommending and describing thirty selected 16 mm. films available for special non-theatrical uses. Designed to articulate the demand for nontheatrical films, the subjects are grouped as follows: Public Administration, Community Life, Education, Ethnology, Animals, Workers and Jobs, and Health. This pamphlet will help discussion groups throughout the country to choose wisely the material for their meetings. * * * Human Relations. Another group of films now providing fruitful discussion in United States educational circles is the series of shorts produced by the PEA's Commission on Human Relations. These shorts are re-edited Hollywood features. Shorn of subsidiary plots and cut down to two reels, the essential problems of the films are presented as case studies of social, racial and personality problems. There is ample evidence that the films are promoting lively discussion and the diehards who still denounce the movies for trespassing on the school are shouted down loudest of all by the children themselves. A new catalogue (just issued to replace an earlier edition which sold at the rate of five hundred a month) gives outlines of the films and teacher's notes, along with a provocative account of the project's means and ends by Alice V. Keliher. * * * The Museum of Modern Art Film Library announces that a new series of ten programmes of French, German and Russian films will be shown in its auditorium daily for an indefinite period. The films include The Italian Straw Hat, Maedchen in Uniform, Kino-Pravda, Potemkin, and Arsenal. The programmes will be shown in rotation so that by attending on ten consecutive days, or by attending on a set day for ten weeks, the complete cycle can be seen. This rotation technique has been tried out already with great success.