The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

October, 1943 % yofi^ JleaUk, jo^! MAURICE FEUERLICHT Chief, Health and Medical Film Unit Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, New York City Page 28 5 Health, Medical and Dental Films for the other Americas Revealing account oi great educational achievement by films in Latin America. NEAR Maracaibo, Venezuela, more than a thous- and citizens of the little mountain village of La Mesa de Esnejaque gathered before a motion picture screen in the Plaza Bolivar. For most of the audience, these were the first movies they had ever seen. Then tragedy struck. There was not sufficient voltage to run the film projector! There were cries of disajjpointment and the Venezuelan equivalent of our hall-park custom of rhythmic handclapping to show impatience. The owner of the local power station had all the street and park lights turned oflf. His assistants hurried through the streets like Paul Revere, knocking on doors and asking housewives to turn out all their lights so there would be enough power to run the projector. The show must go on. Tt did. One of the films for which the audience clapped and cheered was the .story of a Spanish speaking family in Texas, which conquered tuberculosis after the local doctor and priest showed them that, if they knew what to do, the disease would not bring death. A few days later the Maracaibo Herald jiraised an account of the show, and a local radio commentator praised the United States for sending such a palatable form of health education to Venezuela. Several local schools asked for showings and Venezuelan Health Departments offered the film as inducement to attend free clinics and lectures on tuberculosis control. This film, entitled "Cloud In The Sky." was pro- duced by the National Tuberculosis Association and has also been shown widely to non-theatrical audiences in the United States. It is only one of approximately two dozen 16mm. sound films on health subjects which the Health and Medical Films Unit of the Office of Coordinator of Inter-American AtTairs is exhibit- ing throughout other American republics. We have adapted, in Spanish and Portuguese, films which we iiave found to be successful in fighting disease in the United States. Helping us in the work of sharing our health weapons with our good neighbors, have been such organizations as the American Social Hygiene Association, the American .Society for the Control of Cancer, the National Society for the Pre- vention of Blindness, the United States Public Health Service and the Pan-.American Sanitary Bureau. Many of the films we have produced ourselves and have made them available for showing in the United States through national health organizations and the United States Public Health Service. In addition to films showing the general public how to fight cancer, malaria, tuberculosis and otiier disease, we have joined forces with the American College of .Surgeons to prepare teaching films for tiie medical profession. With the aid of Dr. Malcolm T. MacEachern, Associate Director, and Miss Eleanor K. Grimm, in charge of film for the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons, we have under- taken a joint project for the adaptation of a collection of sixty-seven of the finest surgical teaching films ever made in color, to show before Latin American medical societies and medical schools. Under the gui- dance of Dr. Daniel F. Lynch. Chairman of the Pan- American Relations Committee, the American Dental .\ssociation is helping us prepare films of comparable One of the many open air exhibitions of 16mm motion pictures given in Montevideo, Uruguay, during the summer months with an attendance of 500 to 5,000 per exhibition.