Moving Picture Age (Jan-Dec 1922)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

WE WOULD LIKE to concentrate the attention of all church-attending or even merely community-loving persons upon an opportunity for betterment that is commonly slighted. The opportunity ought to reveal itself in this leading question : What do your local church and school do in the summer except gather dust? This is no suggestion that the school instructors and the minister shall forego their vacations ; every person benefits from complete relaxation and a temporary change of environment. But what of the children and adults that have turned to the school and church for educational and religious training and clean recreation during nine months of the year — is it necessary that they be forbidden the enjoyment of these community meeting places for ninety days? The community whose churches and schools have locked doors every summer is not playing fair to its citizenry, young or old. Every one of these closed educational or religious institutions might with perfect accuracy inscribe upon its portals this synopsis of the situation : 'We have nothing for you until September comes again. You may go where you will and with whom you will for these three months; you may indulge in any kind of recreation that you wish. Ninety days from now we will admit you again, and resume our efforts to guide your lives in the ways that are highest, and of course we expect you to be the guileless children and the God-fearing men and women that you were when we closed for the summer." In other words, the school and church flocks are to be guided by good shepherds 75 per cent of the time, but the other 25 per cent shall be forgotten until the shepherds return and try to reassemble the flocks they had so readily allowed to stray. Is there any really valid reason why these centers of the community's interests should not be used for summer exhibitions of films that are worth the seeing? Why could not some of the deacons, if the church were the auditorium selected, or members of the school board, if it were the schoolhouse, have supervision of such exhibitions while the ministers and teachers are on their vacations? We know what one objection will be — "Summer nights are too warm for exhibitions within-doors !" Very well ; then why not follow the example of certain communities and conduct the showing outside, fastening the screen or sheet against the wall of the building? On moonlight nights it is easy to choose the dark side, and such an outdoor exhibition with several reels of carefully chosen material will enable people to forget the summer heat and will provide the finest and yet most inexpensive form of clean entertainment possible. One county farm bureau has attained notable success in summer exhibitions, the method in this case being to take the group for a picnic and then suspend the sheet between trees in the grove. The work of the farm bureau goes on in summer as well as in winter, and film exhibitions have accomplished the purposes sought when the weather was uncomfortably "summery." The subject of summer showings is brought up for your consideration, and also EDITORIALS for assistance from those who have conducted such exhibitions and have ideas to offer on this score. We hope to have for the May issue an interesting article full of practical ideas on the conduct of summer pictures ; and we hope that you who have carried on such showings will come forward with contributions that will have value for the communities now undertaking these exhibitions for the first time, or contemplating such a step. IN THE DEPARTMENT of the National Academy of Visual Instruction this month Secretary Ankeney announces the annual meeting of the Academy, convening at Lexington, Kentucky, for a session covering three days. The feeling is abroad that, for a number of reasons, this session is to be thoroughly in accord with the times. Any sales manager will tell you that many a salesman has dropped by the wayside in the past eighteen months. Why? Merely because, when conditions tightened up and selling was a matter of convincing the customer rather than of accepting the order eagerly extended, these salesmen failed to produce. Any successful organization must produce goods or service for the patrons whose money it accepts, and the Academy is no exception. When the worthwhile accomplishments of the Academy were indirectly called in question a few weeks ago by the formation of the Visual Instruction Association of America for the purpose of doing what it was claimed the Academy had failed to do, no diagram was necessary to make clear that in greater or less degree the Academy had fallen short, else Academy members themselves would not have taken so ready a part as they did in the formation of the new organization. So Academy members and prospective members will probably journey to Lexington with the realization that this meeting is to be more than merely a few able theoretical expoundings, one or two satisfyingly keen discussions, and a number of mild talks and reports. The competency of the Academy has been challenged, in the left-handed fashion of saying that the Academy attempts to serve only the university-extension departments of visual instruction. This session must determine finally the scope and practical worth of the Academy, and this fact alone should draw to Kentucky every member and every visual educator who wants to see visual instruction advance by direct routes and with long strides toward the goal to which its latent possibilities, when developed, will carry it. The foundation of the National Academy of Visual Instruction is an ideal one. It has kept its skirts free of any intimation of commercialism, and for that reason is as free-handed to proceed without secret alliances as such an organization should be. As a matter of fact, this perfect guardianship of its integrity has led it into a quandary 4 at the other extreme, with which we shall deal in a moment. With such broad and tested groundwork the Academy will err sadly if it supinely decides that its field is limited to the work of university extensions. Put the Academy on a practical functioning basis and it will render many classifications of service, several of which are applicable without change to the public-school visual educator, the universityextension worker, the laboratory specialist in visual instruction, the community film exhibitor, and the pastor who employs visual aids in his church. Incidentally let it be remarked that the Academy should take increased cognizance of the pastor who uses visualization ; if ever there was a person endlessly seeking and always truly appreciative of reliable information for his slide or film showings it is the pastor, and when the Academy gets a start on its new program of practical service to the visual educator it can make itself so valuable, even through its bulletins alone, that hundreds of pastors will gladly enrol as members. To digress a moment : In forming the Visual Instruction Association of America, ostensibly to render the service to publicschool visual educators that had not been •rendered by the Academy, a number of those commercially interested in visual instruction made the complaint that they had never received from the Academy any privilege but that of paying their dues. We stated in the March issue, and we reiterate, that this complaint was justified. But we hope the new group, now composed about equally of educators and commercial men, is not headed for the other extreme. It can be set down as a fundamental principle that no visual-instruction association can attain authenticity nor serve its members satisfactorily if its commercial and educational members are on an identical membership basis. Note the italics; "identical" is the crux of the entire situation. Obviously educators are not going to discuss with essential frankness the visual aids shown before them when they know that the producer or distributor of the product is present, and that they must do business with him from time to time. Too many would be inclined to praise the production in public — and carefully refrain from ever renting it. On the other hand, suppose a meeting is called to discuss a reduction in film rentals. How can a dealer in films discuss the topic of prices before a gathering of his customers? An educators' association and a separate commercial men's association is the logical arrangement ; if one organization only is to be maintained, educators' memberships and commercial men's memberships should be established, with parallel but not identical bases. And let not the Visual Instruction Association of America also be so unwise as to fail to provide place for the pastor, for he is a significant factor in visual instruction. But exactly what can the National Academy of Visual Instruction do to count more vitally in the various visualization services of its members? First, it must establish itself as a board of review on educational slide sets and films, and must publish lists or make available to its members in some way the names and sources of visual material that has satisfied the pedagogical standards set up by the Academy. Second, it should establish an official Academy library of films and slides