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

FILM EVALUATIONS # by L. C. Larson and Carolyn Guss The Housefly And Its Control (Coronet Films, Coronet Building, Chicago 1, Illinois) 11 minutes, 16mm, sound, color and black and white, 1962. $120 and $60. Teachers' guide available. Description When summer extends its pleasantries from the south to embrace the entire United States in its out-of-doors activities, its leisure, its water sports, its picnicking, its languorous living, it is accompanied inevitably by its hordes of "bugs." One insect of this group, which is probably more destructive than we imagine it to be, is the pesky housefly. The Housefly and Its Control pictures the menacing aspects of this common insect pest. Through photomacrography, photomicrography, liveaction and close-up photography, the film records aspects seldom viewed with the naked eye that are important in a study of this animal. Laboratory experiments and a large-scale model aid in completing the picture of this insect and its dangers to man. The film begins by showing a fly, in a clean kitchen of a home, walking about upon food that the housewife is preparing. Its harmful activities are then seen in detail as the bacteria, carried by the fly, are cultured on an agar plate and shown to have grown many colonies in just 24 hours. Flies carry bacteria which may produce typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, and tuberculosis. These are transmitted nearly all over the world wherever humans live. In order to control the housefly, its life-cycle must be understood. Most flies begin their lives in decaying materials such as those found on the farm in manure piles and in the city in open garbage cans. A female fly, laying her eggs in filth, shows the beginnings of the life-cycle which continues through the maggot, pupal, and adult stages. The large-scale model of a fly is used to illustrate how it conforms to insect specifications and how it is capable, through its short bristly hairs, foot pads, and lapping mouth parts, of transporting many kinds of bacteria. By these organs, the bacteria are carried as the fly when feed ing may regurgitate microorganisms, may clean his legs, or may excrete "flyspecks" upon man's food. Any of these may contain harmful deposits which can produce diseases in man. Either on the farm or in the city there are measures that must be taken for the regulation and control of the housefly. The local public health services, when functioning to check potential breeding grounds and making recommendation for more sanitary conditions, may aid considerably in the control and regulation of this insect. Appraisal From a seventh grade group of girls in a food preparation class to a sophisticated high school biology class, this film presents the message of the unwholesome characteristics and the need for control of this all-present insect, the housefly. This film should initiate a change in the behavior of those who see it as it presents the housefly closeup, thereby magnifying not only its organs but also its abilities as a conveyor of disease organisms. Since diseases the effects of which are well known are carried by the housefly, the bond of involvement between the audience and the film are strengthened. The more inquiring pupils in the class, after having viewed the film, may very well be motivated to catch a fly, cool it in Mom's refrigerator, and examine it with a hand lens, or with the aid of laboratory resources at their school may wish to perform the bacterial culturing experiment shown in the film. The teacher may want to bring into the classroom the local public health official to tell the class of the measures being taken in the community to control the growth and reproduction of the housefly. It has a companion film entitled The Mosquito and Its Control which follows a similar format and which will serve well as a complementary film in a study of health education. This film has some rather outstanding scenes which serve well to emphasize, through the grotesque appearance of the fly, its potential danger as a carrier of di.sease-causing filth. The photography of a female laying her eggs on a refuse pile, the maggots hatching from these, and the adult breaking from its pupal case evidences the skill and patience of the photographers who filmed the liveaction footage of this film. On the other hand, although one gets an excellent look at the housefly as a carrier of diseases, the film presents the viewer with but little information related to the latter part of its title, i.e. the control of the housefly. Too few scenes showing the procedures for regulating and controlling flies both in the city and on the farm are seen. The film, however, is a worthwhile addition to any classroom for the many exceptional scenes showing the housefly in its daily activities through its life cycle. -Ron UM East Germany: Beyond The Wall (Carousel Films, 1501 Broadway, New York 36, New York) Produced by Columbia Broadcasting System— Television. 53 minutes, 16mm, sound, black and white, 1961. $250. Description East Germany: Beyond the Wall is a Columbia Broadcasting System television news-documentary film, including on-the-screen narration and interviews, which reports on numerous aspects of life in the principal nation forming Communism's western front. Moving at a high angle through the Friedrichstrasse check-point, a CBS camera conveys the Western viewer beyond the Berlin Wall, erected "to make East Germany safe for Communism." Most of what is seen of East Germany is confined to the Baltic port city of Rostock. But the sequences of various phases of life in that city are arrestingly revealing, especially when it is borne in mind that the residents of Rostock are more fortunate materially than most other East Germans and that East Germany has the highest standard of living of any Iron Curtain nation, with the possible exception of Czechoslovakia. Here, in this favored city, the arrival of a shipment of bananas for Christmas is such a special event that women volunteer to help unload the cargo. As in other Communist countries, food is a problem in East Germany. When the food supply fails, propaganda is di.spen.sed as a palliative. A shortage EDUcATIo^AL Screen and Audiovisual Guide — July, 1962 393