The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

Page 380 The Educational Screen Villa refused to j^ermit action shots of himself, finally sold the motion picture right on his jDrivate war to Fox for $25,000—and staged three raids just to give the cameraman good battle stuff! Well, toda}', there is much more to shoot than there was in V ilia's time, and, incidentally, there are no comic opera overtones. When Russia sent 180 men out to shoot One Day On The Russian Front —60 were killed. When England sent 24 men out to shoot Desert Vic- tory —18 were killed, wounded or captured. The first losses of this Unit have already been reported. The Coml)at Camera Commandos of the First Motion Picture Unit show that their work is important to the progress of the war effort. They know that their film, sent to Washington from ever\' theatre of war. may save lives by exposing any weaknesses of American planes and armament, and will result in gains against the Axis by catching on celluloid (jerman and Japanese flaws in machinery, tactics, operation. Moreover, these men of the combat crews know that, when their pic- tures have served strategical purposes, they remain in- valuable as documents to tell those on the home front why they must work harder and harder. The enlisted men of the combat crews come from every corner of the nation—high-salaried cameramen from Hollywood, who once photographed Greta Garbo and Lana Turner; young men from Kansas City and Pittsburgh, who once took 16nim home movies of their wives and children: soldiers, graduates of the Air Forces Photography School, at Lowry Field, in Denver, Colorado. Sometimes, there are sensational assignments. Re- cent film sent back by combat crews of the First Mo- tion Picture Unit were taken by photographers who were only twenty yards from Nipponese machine gun nests and by cameramen who were only 10,000 feet over the belching ack-ack of Naples. One coveted as- signment was that fulfilled by combat cameraman Lieutenant Charles "Scotty" Welbourne who, on two hours notice, left for Casablanca, Africa. There, on the lawn of the Anfa Hotel, he shot Roosevelt. Churchill, Giraud, DeGaulle. Of course, most of the men of the First Motion Picture Unit, while they prefer shooting actual battle .scenes, would like to have sliot the Casablanca meeting. But on further consideration, most of them insist they know a much more photogenic subject. As one tough cameraman explained "You can make any movies you like, shoot any old .subjects you want. I'm interested in only one thing. I think we're using too many stock shots of Hitler. I want to keep going until I can catch up with the dirty so-and-so' and photograph him in person"! .\nd that, exactly that, in a nutshell, is what the First Motion Picture Unit, Army Air Forces, Culver City, California, is fighting for! Post-War Visual Education Potentialities In Latin America* THE Latin American market will have tremend- ous sales potentialities for American 16mm motion picture equipment and films of a peda- gogic type in the post-war period. American visual education libraries too w-ill find a waiting market, but the films will naturally have to be in the lan- guage of the country. The retarding factor for the present is of course, insufficient funds in practically all the Republics. The program of showing educa- tional films, now being carried on bj^ the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in Latin American countries, is doing more to develop the use of motion pictures in teaching than any medium yet devised. This agency with its 113 16mm pro- jectors and its 69 mobile trucks and films is bring- ing home to educators and civilians in the remotest regions of Latin America the potency of the motion picture for teaching purposes. Distribution of this equi'pment in Latin .\merica is as follows: ]6inni Sound Mobile Projectors Trucks 16mm Sound Mobile Projectors Trucks Argentina Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba 6 2 24 9 7 2 10 2 Haiti Honduras Mexico 5 Nicaragua 10 Panama 1 Paraguay 5 Peru Dominican Republic 3 1 El Salvador Ecuador 5 3 Uruguay Guatemala 3 1 \'enezuela 2 3 1 26 1 NATHAN D. GOLDEN Chief, Motion Picture Unit, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Washington, D. C. A thorough summary of the present status of visual aids in each country, and some fore- casts as to probable hiture developments. Those who have seen these films and equipmenL'Will urge their government and school systems to provide the necessary funds to give these advantages to Latin American children. \Mien com])ared with the \ isual education de- velo])ment in the United States, where over 22,000 (12,000 silent) 16mm projectors are available in the schools and colleges for teaching purposes, one finds that a country like Chile has hardly more than 400 such projectors in the entire country; that in Argentina there are several thousand silent 16mm projectors but very few are with sound: that a country as large as Brazil has 1800 silent and approximately 100 16mm sound projectors owned by the Govern- ment for school use; that in countries like Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic. Ecuador, Hon- duras. Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama. Paraguay, and Uruguary, none of the schools has any projector equip- ment. On the other hand the Ministry of Education in Colombia supplies equipment and films to all pri- vate and official schools, having 44 projectors available. In El Salvadorian schools onlv 7 schools *A condensation from Foreign Commerce Weekly.