International Review of Educational Cinematography (Jan-Dec 1934)

800 EDUCATIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHY one projector with amplifier and loud speaker; one gramophone for accompanying a silent film with music; one microscope allowing the lecturer to use the loud speaker for his comments to a silent film or for outdoor projections in summer. In other words, the equipment contains three distinct apparatuses: sound and talking projector; gramophone and loud speaker. The Talking Film. We should like to make a few remarks on a form of propaganda which is still in its infancy. The use of the sound and talking film confers an undoubted superiority on all efforts at popular education. Films of this type are successes for the very reason that they are talking films, that is, they teach the audience, without tiring it, everything it wants to know. A talking picture works out its theme to the end and with an authentic rendering that it is impossible to deny. When the cognitions to be imparted come direct from those who are responsible for them an atmosphere of veracity is set up, and a current of sympathy is established between the spectator and the unseen but heard actors. (What a tremendous repercussion Pasteur's theories would have had if the illustrious savant had been able to make a personal exposition of them himself to the public by means of the talking film. In France this innovation of the sound and talking pictures has chiefly found its openings in the country where it has yielded surprising results for it is still something of a rarity in the villages. In certain regions where a few years ago the lectures only gathered a restricted number of listeners, the present day halls prove too small for the crowds that seek to find admission to the show, in this way realizing or surpassing the most optimistic hopes. Before the organization of the automobile groups, the French countryside had hardly been touched by the Social Hygiene Propaganda Service. Some of the larger centres occasionally received a visit from one of our lecturers. With the automobile-groups which are fitted out with everything required for giving a cinema show, we are now able to reach the most distant mountain villages or the furthest off hamlets of the plains. We may be said to have dug deep into our territory. People of all ages attend our lectures. The rural population, among which a higher degree of comfort and ease is beginning to spread, generally keeps itself up to date with many novelties through the agency of the wireless. But for country people, hygiene is still a novelty. This is why, attracted by the talking film which is still something new in the villages the peasants crowd our lectures and projections in gratifying numbers. Everything connected with vaccines, and preliminary symptoms of illnesses arouses their attention. « We have observed », « wrote one of our lecturers », that films on the B. C. G. vaccine, on diphtheria, cancer and syphilis were all received with the liveliest interest ». The anti-venereal disease campaign which some years ago created such difficulties in the countryside (many small town mayors opposed it entirely) continues to enjoy the approval of the public. The lecture on social hygiene and, where we have been able to introduce it, the lecture of a mixed character on hygiene and agricultural subjects, has become one of our customs and programme items which we should be reluctant to abandon. We continue to receive requests for a intensification of our work and an increase in the number of lectures and projections. Laudatory testimony from prefects or inspectors of Hygiene have convinced us that our long and difficult work has not been in vain. If nowadays our peasants appreciate the notions of hygiene and preventive work against disease and social maladies, if they