Documentary News Letter (1940)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER JUNE 1940 Perhaps this is an unavoidable simplification; but since it is one which is likely to arouse hostile prejudice in a large public, it would be very desirable, if in any way possible, to conform here to the known facts of experience.) Later we see very little of the workers and housewives, and concentrate almost entirely on rather monotonous geometrical symbols. The monotony (particularly the constant return to the diagram of monetary circulation) puts a severe strain on the faculty of attention. It should not be difficult to invent ways of breaking this by the introduction of rather more vivid and realistic pictures. This brings us to the last and more fundamental issue raised by Professor Polanyi's film. Is this kind of film really the right end at which to begin the visual teaching of economics? Or do we not want something less abstract which can be treated by pictures more nearly akin to documentaries proper? There is indeed immense scope first for straightforward documentaries, dealing with such things as, say, the relief of unemployment (meeting of Courts of Referees, Unemployment Assistance officers assessing household means, Unemployment Assistance Appeal Tribunals at work) ; or with the actual work of the City (how many people, not directly concerned, have any mental picture of what goes on on the floor of "the House", or behind the solid walls of the Bank of England?). From this the right sequence might be to pass to a sort of half-way type of film, which would draw simple theoretical lessons, not s much from abstract diagrams, as from pictures of the dai life of the community ; or which would at least build its di; grams directly out of such pictures. Some of Professor Polanyi own lessons might indeed have gone home better if they ha been interspersed with actual pictures of banks, and of the managers accepting and rejecting appHcations for overdraf behind glass partitions. This would have added a touch ( vividness (which is often, rightly or wrongly, the same thing as touch of conviction), and would at the same time have relieve the strain on the attention. In so far as Unemployment and Money is primarily intende for use in classes of serious students working with a teache some of this criticism may be beside the mark ; for it expressi the views of one who saw the film straight through at a sittin In class-work, sections would be taken one at a time, an mental congestion would be relieved by adequate incident exposition. (But in these conditions it is arguable that the ui of a diagrammatic film is actually inferior to the timi honoured method of diagrams on the blackboard constructed by the teacher, and modified by him, as he goes along, to e: plain problems raised by the students on the spot.) For real popular use, on the other hand, the film must be shown \ itself and as it stands ; and it is in this kind of work that a mo \ concrete and realistic treatment might be more fruitful. iFm i m A New Quarterly Edited by Jay Leyda 2 Dollars a Year L) • Published by Kamin Publishers 15 West 56th Street New York NY The Second Number Contains : Collaboration in Documentary by Joris Ivens: Lil Goes to the Pictures by Otis Ferguson: Film Music of the Quarter by Ku] London: A Channel For Democratic Thought by Philip Sterling: Film Problem of the Quarter: Literature of the Film FOREIGN SUBSCRIPTION 3 DOLLARS A YEAR NO. 2 SPRING 194^