Documentary News Letter (1947-1949)

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98 DOCUMENTARY FILM NEWS International Scientific Film Congress London 1948 by JOHN MADDISON the Scientific Film Association of Great Britain was born in 1943, out of the enthusiasms of the scientific film society movement and the pioneer efforts of a group within the scientists' trade union, the AScW. The whole edifice of its achievement since then, in organizing and disseminating information about films and in stimulating a nation-wide interest in the screen as a weapon of science, has been built on the voluntary labours of its members. In 1947, side by side with its French colleagues of the Institut de Cinematographic Scientifique, it carried this achievement further by jointly calling together a Congress in Paris which established the International Scientific Film Association. Delegates from every corner of the earth were unanimous in wishing to honour Britain by holding the Association's 1948 Congress in London. In accepting this invitation, the SFA delegates were conscious that to organize such an event would impose a heavy load upon a body whose only finances were its members' subscriptions. The British Government recognized the value a series of international meetings of this kind would have both for science and cinematography in this country. Through the British Film Institute, it made available to the Scientific Film Association, a grant of money substantial enough to guarantee the decent and efficient management of the occasion. Nine crowded days of activity at the beginning of October with discussions, film shows, exhibitions and international rencontres, were the outcome of some months of anxious preparation. In these lines, I can only offer DFN readers a stop-press canter through what has been up to now the most important series ever held of international manifestations for cinema in the service of science. The Congress began with an event of historic significance in another medium — television. After the opening reception, at which Mr Patrick Gordon Walker had underlined the Government's close interest in the scientific film, the delegates were taken to Alexandra Palace, to see a televised preview of some of the films to be shown later in the week. To my mind, the scene before the television cameras symbolized the routes along which we are hoping to advance. John Grierson, to whom we owe so vast an enlargement of the social dimension of cinema, introduced Jean Painleve, the poet of science on the screen, and Otto Storch, who in his laboratory in Vienna has demonstrated that film is an indispensable instrument of fundamental research.. But the outstanding event of the evening came at the end. A hundred thousand or so viewers were able to see Painleve linking the television camera directly to the microscope and so. for the first time ever, allowing them to gaze with him, through the screens of their sets, on the spectacle of change and movement as it was actually taking place beneath the microscope lens. Painleve has made one of his most characteristic films about Daphnia, the water flea; here we were exploring its tiny anatomy, not through film, but with all the freshness and immediacy of television. Exciting perspectives are opened up by all this — a whole nation may one day together look down into a world beyond the range of normal human vision. In the four days of sometimes dry discussion which followed, constructive endeavour was the keynote; in Ritchie Calder's happy phrase, the Iron Curtain gave place to the Silver Screen. A main issue was the more effective international distribution of films; it was realized that a first step towards this must be a better organized system for the exchange of information about films. To this end, the members of a sub-commission, and notably Painleve, Loose of Holland and Stanford of Britain, worked hard to complete the labours of preceding months and even years in establishing a standard card for recording essential data about individual films. The draft of such a card was approved by the Assembly and will be circulated to all countries. From such beginnings, it is hoped that a reliable international catalogue of scientific films will eventually be evolved. In the meantime, a sub-commission of ISFA will continue to work on cataloguing and appraisal and a further sub-commission will consider, on a brief largely prepared by one of the Australian delegates, other problems of the exchange of films between nations. Besides encouraging the wider distribution of films, the International Association is also pledged to stimulating the production of new scientific films. Science and Cinematography should transcend frontiers, but it was clear from the discussion that internationally there is still much duplication of effort in the production of films, and mutual ignorance of production plans. Apart from the exchange of information about such matters, it was felt that efforts should be made to set on foot international projects — each of which might be coordinated by a single country. For example. Poland was interested in a project on bird migration, Canada might be asked to undertake the co-ordination of a similar one of animal parasites on plants and Britain might envisage working on oceanography and meteorology. The Assembly set up a commission with representatives from Britain. France. Denmark. Poland. Canada and Mexico, to consider how these ideas might he implemented; Arthur Elton, the British member, was entrusted with the task of drawing up a preliminary document to give these general ideas on production a practical shape. A three-day festival of scientific films at the Royal Empire Society gave delegates and some two thousand members of the public the opportunity of seeing some fifty films from close on a score of countries. From Britain, there were among others the solid expositional virtues of Precise Measurements for Engineers (Data — COI for DSIR). a superb high-speed record of Fuel Atomization (SIM PL for Shell Film Unit) and GB's splendid Atomic Physics. From France, with a host of other good things, came a series of remarkable biological research films, wittily commented on by the maker, Dragesco. Poland contributed a beautifully photographed and altogether enchanting film on the incubation of young birds. One of Canada's films was the acutely observed psychological piece Feeling of Hostility. The New Zealand Government Film Unit took us on a research expedition to a remote volcanic island, and Australia's study of the diet of a primitive Pacific community brought an exotic flavour to one show. At another show, spontaneous applause interrupted the screening of World of Crystals, one of two colour films from the Soviet Union. And these are only a handful of purely personal impressions out of an embarrassment of riches from the countries named and a dozen others. Of particular value were the occasions during the congress when specialists met to discuss common problems. At three medical sessions, films were shown, special techniques of research by the cine-camera demonstrated, and ideas exchanged on the best ways of conveying information about medical films. At the educational meetings, speakers from England and Wales, Scotland, Denmark. Egypt. Belgium. Germany and Australia, were mainly concerned with the organization of school film services, and many interesting contrasts of method and approach were brought out. Another specialized session took as its theme the use of films in university teaching and a plan for inter-university co-operation on the international scale was set on foot. The film in industry was the subject of a final specialized meeting. Speakers from the major industries of Britain, from the Belgian FBI and its Ministry of 1 abour. from the National Film Board of Canada, and from the French industrial film organization, Service-Cinema-Interentreprises. gave some account of their problems and showed films. The working parties, set up at these specialized gatherings, organized by the appropriate Standing Committees of SFA, were given the blessing of the International Assembly. On the margins, so to speak, of the Congress, there were a number of stimulating events. The Central Office of Information organized (Continued on page 104)