International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1932)

950 PROPAGANDA IN FAVOUR OF THE EDUCATIONAL AND TEACHING FILM (A lecture by JEAN BENOIT-L£VY) M. Jean Benoit-Levy is not only a cinema producer well known for his films of many kinds in the fields of social propaganda, education and school teaching, but he is also a indefatigable propagandist of the ideas which our Institute is endeavouring to make triumphant in all the countries of the world. Yesterday in Algiers or at Bordeaux, today in Lyons or Marseilles, tomorrow somewhere else, Jean Benoit-Levy carries around with ardour and faith the good word of propaganda. The films he exhibits are the most convincing and eloquent demonstration of what may be looked for from the cinema as an instrument of general progress. The lecture recently given at Nice by the Secretary General of the French committee of the I. I. E. C. merits especial mention, not only because M. Benoit-Levy s work was particularly useful, in view of the public to whom the lecture as addressed, but also because it reveals the existence in a city generally considered merely a city of pleasure of a group of friends of the type of cinema we are engaged in supporting. In fact, the meeting before which our friend developed his ideas on the possibilities and necessities of getting the cinema out of the rut in which it is stuck at present, and of using the new technique for the good of humanity was held under the auspices of the group known as " L'Effort cinematographique ". Jean Benoit-Levy pointed out the various fields in which the new technique has been utilized for these purposes, and the fields in which it could be usefully employed. For example, the speaker referred to the use made of the film by the French ministry of agriculture for educational purposes requiring an annual loan of some 20.000 films or about 10,000,000 feet of film. The same effort ought to be made, according to M. Benoit-Levy, in other directions and especially for vocational training and technical instruction. We know that the French cinema expert is firmly determined to continue along the path he has set himself to follow, and that he intends to utilize for his propaganda tours in favour of the educational and scholastic film the brief hours of liberty that remain to him from his work as an artist devoted to a class of production, which, to use his own words " utilizes the new technique in the interests of humanity . THE EDUCATIONAL CINEMA IN THE PUNJAUB Official reports which have been courteously forwarded to the Rome Institute by the Public Education Department of Lahore in the Punjaub afford an excellent idea of the development of the educational film for children and young folk in one of the most progressive states of British India. The educational cinema has made marked progress during the last few years in the Punjaub. Some time ago, the Punjab Text Book Committee bought, as a mere exper iment, a Kodak projection machine and a certain number of films. It also made arrangements with an expert operator that he should travel round all the centres of the province giving free scholastic cinema shows limited to films of a scientific, geographical and historical character. In order gradually to develop this work, the Text Book Committee included in its budget a sum totalling several thousands of rupees for the purchase of films to be