The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

The Educational Screen School Department Conducted by Marie Goodenough The Movies Have Their Wanderlust THE present novelties of the non-theatrical as well as the theatrical screen are pictures of the out-of-doors, in the wilder and more primitive regions. With the recent, and not at all surprising, popularity in New York of Hunting Big Game in Africa with Gun and Camera, which is reported to have played to capacity audiences at higher prices than any other film on Broadway at that time, comes a renewal of interest in the remoter parts of the earth. The Southern Hemisphere is receiving much attention of late,* and seems temporarily to be threatening the supremacy of California in the first-run theatres. There are grouped here several productions of recent release which are of definite educative value, and available in general for non-theatrical use. Bali, the Unknown (Prizma), 4 reels — There's the witchery of the South Seas in it — beginning with its very first scene, a smooth beach of lava sand glistening in the tropical sunlight — excellent photography with color added to its list of charms; and above all, a scholarly faculty for picking the significant and the true in what it sees. It is an artistic picture of life as it is lived in remote Bali — not always an altogether pleasant picture, but always a sincere and genuine one. There is remarkably little of the deliberately "theatrical" about it— which should but serve to recommend it to the discriminating. At the start, the locality of the island of Bali is pointed out on a map of the region around Java "The native makes his offering in the wayside shrine — that the sea water may always be salt." and Borneo, and the film proceeds at once to picture for us the native life of the island. And a picturesque life it is, as the film records it, whether the native be occupied with launching his curiously shaped outrigger against the waves of the tropic sea, or seen in his rice fields on the The fishermaiden, her headdress the bottle-like container in which she carries her tiny catch. mountain slopes. Nor is domestic industry forgotten, for the film, shows weaving being done by the women and girls who are skillful in painting designs on cloth. The people of Bali live under the caste system, as do the countless millions of its neighbor lands. The appearance of the high caste, of which the priests' families are representative, seems to be characterized principally by seven-inch finger nails ; to the second caste belong rulers and warriors; to the third, the traders and artisans (a swordmaker at his work is a fascinating example of the painstaking art of the East) and in the fourth class are the workers in the fields. And the caste system is strong. There is a fugitive couple, venturing to marry out of caste. outlawed and driven from the island. Not the least remarkable feature of the subject is the picture it gives of primitive industry. Mpn go into the sea surf with huge bottle-shaped water containers, the sea water is collected and thrown onto the beach sand, where the water evaporates, leaving the salt particles attached to the surface sand. This sand is skimmed off, in a filtering vat the sand sinks to the bottom, the salt brine is