Educational screen & audio-visual guide (c1956-1971])

Color Filmstrip Service for Educational Producers A scene in the Muiiiiunun ■^u:^i Lab filmstrip on "Alexander the Great" processed for Dr. William Lewin. Let us do all or part of the work you require in color processing. No order too small or too large for our special educational department. Manhattan Color Laboratory 254 W. 54th St., New York 36 FOR THE FOKWARD LOOK A New Film Catalog to help you select films for your own use. Choose from more than 1 00 titles, including these current releases: 1. Beginning Music Reading 2. Chotu and His Jungle Elephant 3. Creating Cartoons 4. Fundomentol Skills in a Unit of Work 5. Hanging and Finishing a Hem 6. Mexican Fishing Village write today for your FREE copy! BAILEY FILMS, INC. iSO? DE LONGPRE AVE HOLLYWOOD 28. CALIF. latory system — one of the most important in the whole body. A combination of modern surgery and close-up photography enables one to look through a thoracic incision and get an unusual view of a live dog's beating heart. We see the heart pulsing rhythmically as it carries on its ceaseless job of pumping blood. Attention is next directed to drawings which show the contributions of Vesalius and Harvey, two medical pioneers whose work brought about a greater understanding of the circulatory system's role in the human body. The narrator states that during the sixteenth century Vesalius discovered that the blood flows in tubes or blood vessels. Harvey proved two things — that the blood flows in a given pattern and that it is circulated to bring nutrition to body cells and to carry away cell wastes. The major portion of the film is devoted to an analysis of the circulatory system itself. Cinefluorography shows the human heart as a dark mass of muscular tissue moving between the lungs. Magnified sound lets the audience hear the heartbeat as if listening through a physician's stethoscope. Detailed animated drawings show the heart's four interior chambers — two auricles and two ventricles. The action of the valves is shown. Light colored or purified blood is carried away from the heart in arteries, and dark colored or impure blood is returned in veins. The scene changes to show the live dog's beating heart again. This time, a large artery called the "aorta" is carefully pointed out as the narrator makes explanations. Magnified drawings show how an artery branches off into smaller blood vessels, arterioles, which branch off into capillaries. The blood is next shown entering slightly larger vessels, veinules, before it flows into larger veins which carry it back to the heart. The pulmonary artery and vein are pictured and described, and a highly magnified microscopic scene shows blood circulating through the capillaries of a frog's foot. An animated diagram shows how the blood flows as it passes from the head to the arms, to the legs, and enters the abdominal organs. As the blood passes through the abdomen, it enters the kidneys. The narrator explains the complex .system of filters within the kidneys and tells us that they purify the blood of certain types of wastes. In conclusion, diagrams summarize the principles of circulation. The film points out the body's need of good food and sufficient rest and suggests ways of relating the actions of the circulatory system to everyday living. APPRAISAL The film is recommended for use on the junior and senior high school levels in general science and biology classes. It should also be of interest to teachers of health and safety. The film explains and clarifies through visualization the functioning of the entire circulatory system. Animated illustrations, drawings, close-ups, overprints, and carefully introduced scientific terms enhance the teaching value of the film. -Pearl Walker Headd WORLD WAR II: PROLOGUE, U. S. A. (Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, 1150 Wilmette Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois) 28 minutes, 16mm, sound, black and white, 1956. $125. Teacher's Guide available. DESCRIPTION Excerpts of documentary films from the collection of the National Archives in Washington, D C, combine with animated maps to make a filmed, narrated review of the highlights of the historic events of 1920, through 1941 — up through the entry of the United States into World War II. The film provides a chronological account of the stages through which American public opinion passed in the "great dilemma" of the many citizens who wanted to help the victims of .\xis aggression, and at the same time wished to avoid foreign entanglements. Various world leaders are pictured, with their voices in the background; but Roosevelt, Churchill, Willkie, and Chamberlain are seen and heard at several points in the historic chronology. A sequence of scenes reporting some of the activities at Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, opens the film; then scenes show the surprise bombing attack by the Japanese which catapulted the United States into World War II. The picture uses this declaration of war as the point of departure; the events which led up to and caused the second World War are traced and explained in the major portion of the filmed pageant. America is .seen as building a wall of isolation around itself. The great depression which struck at both European and Yankee economy is shown to be a strong contributing factor making possible the rise of totalitarian states in Italy, Germany, and Japan. Bound together by their common interests, these nations become the coalition of the .Axis power; the failure of the League of Nations to prevent the danger of the military threat they posed to the rest of the world and also the British philosophy of "Balance of Power" is 248 EdScreen & AV Guide — May, 1 957