Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

92 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMS Your Children's Eyes. Realist F.U. for M.O.I. Producer: John Taylor. Direction: Alec Strasser. C.F.L. 19 mins. Subject: The care of children's eyes. A film for parents. Treatment: The film falls into three parts — physiology of the eye ; how the eye works and causes of long and short sight ; diseases of the eye. The physiology of the eye is most ingeniously demonstrated by using an orange as a model, whose function and analogy to the eye are interpreted by a conjurer. Indeed, the effect, completely successful, is so purely of the cinema that it is difficult to describe. Long and short sight are explained, by blackboard drawings, set out by a schoolmaster who is shown taking a class. Though the treatment here is more conventional, the very roughness of the chalk drawing with the intentness of the child audience, compels concentration on the part of those watching the film. The last part of the film, sensitively made though it is, seems dull in comparison with the scenes which precede it. Propaganda Effect: The film perhaps attempts too much, and the novelty of the opening scenes inevitably tends to kill the effect of the later scenes. Even so, the film is a most striking one, and we hope the technique it displays will be extended and developed in other health films. The first part, if detached from the rest, might be converted into an excellent elementary physiology teaching film for children. A Mamprusi Village. M.O.I. Direction: John Page. C.F.L. 19 mins. Subject: Village life in West Africa. Treatment: The film resolutely shoulders the white man's burden. The coloured men are shown as gay, childlike, amiable, irresponsible, happy and carefree — just simple noble savages. As for diseases or hunger, well, they're too much like children to notice such things. Perhaps they are thankful to their masters and die; or perhaps they are never diseased or hungry : one simply is not told. However, within its terms of reference, which evidently excluded any treatment of anything save the innocuous, the film is pleasant and informative enough. The characters are sympathetically handled; something of their legal system is demonstrated; self government under the chiefs is said to be going to lead to full self government one day ; it is explained that the chiefs are no longer allowed to rob their followers. Propaganda Effect: If shown to children, this film will convince them that coloured people are totally different from white people, for it is not explained that many of the differences are superficial, and the outcome of climate or locality, or that many of our customs seem just as peculiar to coloured people as theirs do to us. The film will cut no ice in America, for it will merely confirm the views of the antinegroes, and look like evasiveness to the others. Think again, M.O.I. Think again, Colonial Office. The Story of Money. Production: Gryphon Films for Banking Information Service. Direction: Charles De Lautour. Camera: Charles Marlborough. Producer: Donald Taylor. C.F.L. 12 mins. Subject: How modern currencies, banking and the cheque system have been evolved from primitive barter tokens. Treatment: The film traces the evolution of the coin, the cheque and the modern bank with all its complex ramifications by means of a number of ingenious sequences of prints, museum specimens and actuality scenes. The treatment is in the style of The Story of the Wheel an early documentary which substituted simplicity and imagination for the ponderous historical treatment ordinarily accorded to such subjects. Both films remind us how much a good cameraman can achieve with how little; and that the atmosphere of a distant period in history can be as easily achieved by a close-up of hands moving some beautifully time-worn object as by all the costumes which line the shelves of Messrs. Nathans. The film explains in clear, simple terms the manner in which the modern cheque book has developed from the early Promissory Note and Bill of Exchange. We see some of the ingenuities and complexities of the Clearing House and the Mint. Propaganda Value: This is a useful educational '\ film which wisely refrains from covering moA* than its own selected corner of the field oA economics. There is a time when one fears trull. an unsophisticated audience may be sent awajlfcwith an inflated view of the power and import-L ance of money as such, but the educational!* balance is restored in the nick of time by at salutary reminder that money is an econon . means rather than an economic end. Soil Erosion. Information Films of Indian Direction: Kenneth Villiers. Camera: Jinaraiif Bodhye. Production: Ezra Mir. CFL 10 minutes. Subject: Soil erosion in India, its causes and its< cure. Treatment: A brief pictorial survey of what sol erosion looks like opens the film, which goes on to illustrate its causes and its effect on peasant life. Then we see how it can be combated or avoided. The approach is simple and direct but the film would have made its points more clearly if there had not been so many changes of visual. The shots themselves were good but there was a tendency to try and cram too many of them in. Timing was the main fault of this extremely in-i teresting film — a little less commentary, fewer. JL shots held for a longer time, would have im proved it enormously. It was rather a large subject for one reel an it would perhaps have been better done in tw parts of a reel each. But as one so seldom warn to see more of a film this criticism is in itself sign that the film was good. Propaganda Value: Soil erosion is a world p: blem. This film does a good job by putting Indi into the world picture. ^k For your information TN every progressive enterprise there must be leaders -l-and those who follow behind. As artistic and technical progress in kinematography quickens to the tempo and stimulus of war, " KINEMATOGRAPH WEEKLY" is always to be found " up-with-theleaders ", its well-informed pages radiating perception and far-sighted thinking. Kinematography's leaders themselves know this for truth ^ and turn to " K.W." week by fpM week for information and i Wfl H'" I enlightenment. 93 LONG LONDON ACRE W.C.2