The Educational screen (c1922-c1956])

250 The Educational Screen A blackboard technique has been developed by the visual education committees of the sixteen normal schools. Through a cooperative agreement between the Department of Labor and Industry and the Teachers Training institutions, examinations for the amateur projectionist's license are now conducted by the visual education committees at all normal schools. One hundred and forty-five seniors at the State Teachers College took this examination for the fir.st time on May 7. The school journey has a definite place in kindergarten instruction and in teacher preparation in Pennsylvania. It is very generally used by grades, high schools, and by the various colleges. Two hundred and twenty-five schools visited the State Capitol from May 1, 1928 to May 1, 1929. The groups ranged in number from a dozen to twelve hundred. The State visual education The National Parks for Visual Education Lantern Slides, Travelogues, Moving Pictures both 35 mm. (standard) and 16 mm. Published by Henry G. Peabody p. O. Box 111 Pasadena, California Send for Catalogues committees have developed and have made ready for the printer a bulletin on object-specimen-model methodology. Philadelphia has added a director of visual education to the superintendent's staff. Both first class school districts now have visual directors. Most second class districts have part-time visual supervisors or someone directly responsible for visual materials. A complete account of the advance made along the various lines above indicated was published in the Pennsylvania School Journal for June. The Russian Film (Concluded from page 239) the train, the vanishing scenery. The train brings a friend of the husband to the town where he fails to find a lodging. "Very well ;" says the husband, "you can sleep on the sofa." The camera never gives the impression of going outside the room, as so often happens with the three-sided set. These three are shown remorselessly, humourously living the eternal triangle. The friend pays small attentions to the wife ; he brings her a fashion magazine. Then the husband is called away for a week on business, and when he returns he finds the inevitable has happened. He storms out of the house but soon discovers that sleeping in the office is not as comfortable as the sofa at home. Friendship between the two men is renewed. They play draughts together. The woman sits at the window forgotten. A motor car passes with glaring headlights. Other people have their place in the world. To make herself important again she spreads the sheets on her bed. The technique of this film is astounding. In one scene the woman is crying at her dressing table. A cut is made to a closeup of a china cat's head with tears streaming down its cheeks; tears dropping from the eyes of the woman. Compare this brilliance with Hollywood's art-films about clowns whose hearts are rent behind their laughing, faded masks. Finally I must record that I have seen a Russian comedy, Mosco'cv That Laughs and Weeps directed by Barnett. A few find it delightful but I find it frightening, because I see the glimmer of the Western mind, the attempt to. produce for a world market. It is nice to know that the Russians can feel trivial after the intense drama of such pictures as Two Days, hut it is an omen. The housing shortage is turned to farce in Moscow That Laughs and Weeps, nevertheless it does show us a Russian problem, just a little bit of Russia. Sorrow follows with the thought that other films have shown us almost the whole of Russia ; they were so near the earth, so true, so of the people. If Russia fails, where else can we look for this fearlessness, the comprehension of what is cinematic, this beautiful feeling for things? In the drama Two Days there is a sequence of a deserted house ; light polishes the floor because there is no-one on whom to shine, a few curtains billow out with the breeze. Such tenderness, such feeling for the empty house could not be found in the production of other nations ; just as the brothel scenes of The Yellow Pass will never be duplicated outside of Russia. It will be the blackest hour of cinema history if Russia becomes commercialized. No doubt I exaggerate for there will always be Pudowkin and Eisenstein.