We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
WHY FILM COLLECTIONS SHOULD BE INSTITUTED IN THE SEVERAL COUNTRIES
(From the German)
I. The demand for educational films.
It is really surprising that the demand for cultural and educational films, which is already rather keenly felt in all civilized countries, should have led only in very few of them, and in these in a very limited number of cases, to the collection of such films.
It would seem obvious to institute film collections, as a kind of reservoir from which the demand could be more easily filled, whether the films be required simply for general exhibition or to meet the purposes of science, pedagogics, psychology, cinematography, etc., or of the history of civilization. Why is the need for such collections for scientific purposes as well as for popular education work so keenly felt ? Above all, owing to the fact that present day films are so perishable and short-lived. Dealers have never hitherto shown any interest in films with their commercial career behind them. Novelty ! Novelty ! is their cry. Although the reason for all this may be found to a great extent in the circumstance that the film is still in its first evolution stages, yet even in this early period of the educational film, as in the older period of the popular film, much has been produced that we would like to retain, to preserve, to see and show again. Unfortunately, there has been little or no chance of this up to the present. The required films simply could not be got hold of again, as they had been thrown away, destroyed, or used up in the shape of waste material.
It might be inferred from this that there was previously no great demand for such films or that such requirements as existed could be somehow sufficiently
{Author's Note.) This paper was already written when the first issue of the « International Review of Educational Cinematography » appeared, containing a statement about the creation of a film collection through the International Educational Cinematographic Institute. This central collection should be welcomed. It had already been suggested in the first draft of the present article, the purpose of which was, and is, to stimulate the institution of such public film collections, which should promote simultaneously the collection, the study, the improvement, and the distribution of educational films for teaching and popular education purposes. This contribution, therefore, supplements and amplifies what is put forward in the introductory article to the first issue of the International Review, as it deals with the whole question of the institution of public film collections.
(Ed. Note). The contribution of our illustrious collaborator, who has done so much for the educational cinematograph in Austria, touches on a question of the greatest interest. During past years many eminent students of cinema problems have examined the question which is here so amply and authoritatively dealt with by Prof. Witt. A later issue will contain a further paper of considerable importance on this question.
ingl. 3