International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

EDUCATIONAL AND TEACHING CINEMA IN FRANCE 501 of other administrations and ministries such as the ministry of Agriculture and the ministries of Post and Telegraphs, National Defence and Physical Education. This year it has engaged in some experiments which go beyond the strict limits of the teaching film, publishing big documentary pictures like La Croisiere Noire, Calais, etc. Another recent initiative of the Pedagogic Museum consists in the creation of a numerous series of slides on 35 mm film, which permits the utilization of the films for cinema projection apparatus fitted with special devices. The wide development of the services of the Pedagogic Museum has obliged this old and excellent institution to renew its organization and extend its work. In its new offices in the Rue Ulm, the Museum has been able to provide extensive and well fitted out premises for its projection services that are kept properly up to date. Besides the general business offices, there is a large stock of films kept in modern metal covers. Several rooms are reserved for cinematographic studies. The cabin of the handsome hall for projections and lectures is well worth noticing. This cabin, built and fitted out according to the personal ideas of Monsieur Lebrun, has a special electric feed equipment for light and energy and an installation of moveable canvass frames which permits any producer or manufacturer to show his films and machines under the best technical conditions possible. It would take too long to describe the new offices of the Pedagogic Museum in detail, or even that part reserved only to the Central Service of Luminous Projections. It will be enough to say that premises, installation and organization are worthy in every way of an institution which, while it succeeds in remaining youthful in spite of its age, has an important and prominent task for the spreading of the educational and teaching cinema in France, and can be considered both in this matter as well as in everything which refers to teaching in general as a centre of studies and documentation of the first importance. The Offices of the Today the Central Educational Cin Service of luminous ema* projections of the Pe dagogic Museum only serves five departments. Forty-seven other departments are served by twelve regional bureaux of the educational cinema, not including the bureau for Algiers, and the other 37 departments which have their own bureaux. These bureaux, wherever they exist, operate under the control of the rectors or Academy inspectors as decentralized stores of the Pedagogic Museum. Created by teachers who make use of the cinema in their work these bureaux are, from the juridical point of view, free associations created according to the regulations laid down in the fundamental law of 1901 on associations. They receive subsidies from the State, the departments and the communes, and collect other funds from the subscriptions due from their members. They may be considered in a way as branch offices or bureaux of the Pedagogic Museum, and some of them carry out equivalent functions for the central film repositories of the ministry of Agriculture and the General Direction of Technical Instruction. The films entrusted by these public bodies to the regional and departmental bureaux can be divided for the year 1933-34 in the following fashion : Pedagogic Museum . . . . 59 % Agriculture 32 % Technical Teaching .... 9 % The bureaux possess a certain number of films of their own. In the majority of cases these are recreational pictures of normal 35 mm size and educational films in various reduced formats which meet the requirements of the various members. In addition to the 4050 normal 35 mm machines in use, there are also at least as many more reduced size projectors in the schools. This question of the diversity of formats