International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

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CINEMA AND TEACHING METHODS BY Giovanni Calo, Professor of Pedagogy at the University of Florence. General Considera T^he utility of the frĀ°ns> A cinema in the school no longer constitutes an argument for discussion. It is accepted there as is its indispensability in modern civilized life. The motion picture represents one of the most potent means for satisfying two characteristic needs of our society; that is, to shorten distance as much as possible, both materially and morally and to render accessible in the briefest interval of time possible the greatest number of objects, aspects, etc. of human life to the greatest number of persons. If we recognize this fact, we shall easily understand that the cinema is not a more or less amusing invention capable of various new and original applications, but is one of the necessary products of the development of the human spirit, and corresponds essentially to the rhythm of such development. It supplies a unique means for illustrating certain characteristics of our contemporary civilization and assists us in arriving at higher levels of existence of which we have today only a very approximate idea. Its utility becomes discussible only when its importance is unduly exaggerated in comparison with older methods of progress. Such exaggerations consist for instance in considering the cinema superior to the book as an instrument of culture and civilization as Leon Bourdel did, although with some reserves, in the Ere Nouvelle of February 1 934. People who do this forget what is the essential characteristic superiority of the book and verbal expression in general. It lies in this that it first of all presents things, images, abstract truths, events, states of mind, etc. through an elaboration and a logical, minute and precise articulation or an inexhaustible flux of fantastic movements, colours and emotive tones, such as can result only from the virtue of the word, and the life of the spirit reflected in that transparent, varied, and infinitely supple instrument. The second special characteristic of the printed word is that it can accompany man everywhere, in all circumstances and moments of his life, in public and in private, when travelling or among the solitudes of tr?e mountains or the desert, at school, or in bed. The omnipresent intimacy through which the book or the newspaper can truly become man's inseparable companions is a privilege which belongs solely to printed matter. There is also the fact that in this way inestimable treasures of human thought, which would otherwise disappear for ever, are preserved for us and could be preserved in no other way unless we let our fancy run so far ahead as to imagine motion picture reproduction of texts. Fortunately, it is unnecessary to have recourse to exaggerations of this kind to exalt the cultural and educational value of films. If, as I have said, we see in the motion picture an essential and historically necessary and indispensable instrument of human progress, we must be convinced a priori that it is destined to have an equally useful and indispensable function in the school. We must, however, have a clear and definite idea of the way in which the cinema can, owing to its special nature, be applied to didactic purposes, in order to understand what we can expect of it and to perceive with what other means it must be integrated or corrected in view of the educational aims