Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1953)

46 TENTH FOR CITY COLLEGE Here's how one major American city has helped to meet the need for more trained movie makers LAWRENCE WEINER The Film Institute, City College of New York EVER since the first one-reelers were made, there has been an increasing interest in the possibilities of using motion pictures for other than story telling. For, although the story-teller has dominated the industry, pioneers were working with the fact film as early as the 1920s. But, by and large, such objective film making remained in the experimental stage until the needs of the last war for training films and specialists who could make them provided the necessary impetus. To help meet the shortage of trained men and women who could make documentary films, the City College of New York organized the Institute of Film Techniques in its evening session. And almost immediately its graduates went to work for private industry, for government agencies such as the OWI and the Signal Corps. So successful was the school that, after the war, City College added the course of study in the Institute to its regular day-session curriculum, making CCNY one of the few schools in the nation that offered a bachelor's degree in movie making. And now, only last month, the Film Institute has marked its tenth anniversary with a special showing of student workshop movies at New York's Museum of Modern Art. During that ten year period, more than 4000 students from all parts of the world, have studied documentary film making at City College. The growth of the Institute underscores the increasing importance of the motion picture as a medium of communication and a weapon in the war of ideas. Many students have come to the college, either for the film degree or for the evening session courses alone, from foreign countries — India, France, England, Turkey, South Africa, Israel, Pakistan, The Philippines and South America. Their aim was to learn how to make films for the education of their impoverished or war-ravaged countries. Still others have gone on to professional success: two, Karl Hinkle and Albert Wasserman, won a 1947 Academy Award as producer and writer of the documentary film, First Steps, shortly A WORKSHOP UNIT, on set in a CCNY machine shop, lines up a scene for Tomorrow's Engineers, a fact-film production on M. E. training. after leaving the Institute. But not all want to become professionals. For many amateurs who have made films by themselves come at night to learn more. We like to feel at City College that the Film Institute is particularly well adapted to help them all. For while the courses stress the practical skills involved in film making, the Institute tries to give more than mere technical training. The school and its teachers make clear the importance of the "why" in motion pictures, as well as the "how" of their technique. The idea that the camera can have a point of view is not new to the Institute's director, Hans Richter, one of the pioneers of the avant-garde film movement. One of the first to use film as a creative art, his Rhythms 1921 is today a classic of its kind. Documentary films on Germany's post-war inflation and the aviation industry in the mid-1920s followed, and in 1929 he started an antiNazi documentary. After the inevitable beating from Storm Troopers, he fled to Holland to finish this opus. At last, in 1941, he came to this country. His most recent production, Dreams That Money Can Buy, won the Venice International Film Festival Award. With him at City College are such men as Lewis Jacobs, veteran film maker and the author of Rise of the American Film, and Leo Seltzer, who directed the 1947 Academy Award winner, First Steps. Under their guidance students take courses in directing, sound and film editing, photography, music, lighting, script writing and animation. The core of the Institute, however, is the Workshop class, in which every phase of motion picture making is covered. Here all of the student's knowledge is synthesized in the making of a movie. Working from 4 to 8 hours a week, the Workshop crew decides on its topic, writes a script, breaks down the shooting and acts the parts. The students serve variously as the cameramen, electricians, prop hands and di rectors. In this fashion, they learn each phase of picture production. But they are taught also the social function of their films by the kind they produce. During the war, the Institute produced two motion pictures on the black market for the OPA. More recently, the students have made films for the college's Psychology, Art, Sociology and Hygiene departments that will be used in the classrooms. One of the films, Tomorrow's Engineers, illustrates well the value of their work. At the request of the Mechanical Engineering department at the college, the Workshop class produced a 10 minute movie that showed the kind of education MEs at the college were receiving. The modern machine shops, the equipment used and the methods of teaching were the basis for this sound film. In use, the picture is shown to high school students interested in mechanical engineering and who want to find out more about the field. The film also goes to prospective employers among large engineering firms who want to know the kind of educational background and technical training they may expect from CCNY graduates. The Institute's most ambitious work, just completed, is a 30 minute sound film on juvenile delinquency. Made in conjunction with the college's Sociology department, the production shows the activities of juvenile gangs in the neighborhood of the school. Concentrating on one of the gangs, the film showed the destructive nature of the group ; it then went on to picture how a member of the college's Community Service division won the confidence of the group and eventually channeled its energies into more constructive activities. With the ever increasing use of films in schools, business and political life, not to mention television, the future for the fact and documentary film gets bigger and bigger. That means also a brighter future for the men and women who can make those films needed.