International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1931)

1044 should be taken of such apparatus and the organising of popular cinematographic entertainments. 5) That all State organs of film production and distribution shoifld come to an agreement concerning conformity of method with reference to the placing and distribution of films of an official character. V Committee (technical instruction). The Congress, considering that, as experience has shown, technical films are a most important aid to the teacher, that today only a limited number of such films exist, and that the only way of increasing this number is is to ensure the sale of the positives in order to neutralise the cost of the negatives, recommends : that the State include in its budget the necessary credits for the acquisition ■of films for its technical schools and encourage with the necessary subvention private enterprises for the production of such films. VI Committee (artistic instruction). The Committee recommends that no film should be shown in a school without having been controlled by a commission formed of persons whose criticism is accepted as competent from the artistic point of view. That all schools of art be provided with a cinematographic apparatus. That the method of teaching by the demonstration of colours and lines, presented to the Congress by Mr. Ibels, be used in all schools. VII Committee (higher instruction). 1) In order to spread the use of the cinema in higher instruction the master should dispose of a considerable number of films referring to the subject of instruction. 2) These films should be presented in such a way that they complete the master's lesson, but should not in them selves represent complete lessons, which are generally found to be useless. 3) The Congress recommends that a national cineteca of higher instruction be created for the collection of all scientific and technical news items regarding films, and as wide a distribution as possible of such items. 4) The films should be distributed among the already existing regional cinetecas, which should form a section of the higher instruction financed by the State and the various scientific and regional organisations. These regional cinetecas should be responsible for keeping the films and distributing them to teachers, to students and also to the public, if considered necessary. The description of the film and the bibliography of the publications referring to them should be published in special school periodicals specialised according to subject. VIII Committee (documentary films). Considering that the documentary film along with the ordinary film, must continue to be of the greatest service to schools : that its function is even more efficacious in public cinema halls, on account of its instructive and educational qualities, that it is in the general interest to favour the production and diffusion of this kind of film, that, despite the public success of some particularly remarkable works, the hired film continues to hold the worst place in programs assigned to documentary films. that the cinematographic industry justly complains that it is weighed down by taxes, a situation which places the hirer under the necessity of sacrificing the moral and intellectual value of a film to the more facile commercial success, but that in any case film programs that deprave the intelligence and are dangerously suggestive to morals cannot in any way be encouraged by the State,