Reel and Slide (Mar-Dec 1918)

REEL and SLIDE 17 Screen in Community Center Work Attitude and Influence of Commercial Theater Serious Deterrent, Says Welfare Expert Need Seen for Comprehensive Film Library of Educational Reels for Institutional Use By Edward F. Sanderson (Director, People's Instihite, New York City) A NUMBER of community centers in New York have motion pictures as one of their attractions. The new school buildings are regularly equipped for the installation oictures as one of their attractions. The new is at hand when, so far as the physical facilities of the school building are concerned, motion pictures may become important in the intensive use of school properties. Outside the schools, there are more than 1,000 theaters, operating week days and Sundays, exhibiting motion pictures to three-quarters of a million of people each day. There is a state law which prohibits the admission of children under sixteen years of age without parents or guardians, but this law is habitually violated and presumably always will be. At least 50,000 children attend motion-picture shows daily, under technically illegal conditions. Motion pictures draw with the greatest power upon the formative elements of our city's population. Under such conditions, how logical is the idea of using motion pictures in community centers ! A special problem of the community center is that of arousing interest among dwellers in the school neighborhood. To arouse interest — this is the peculiar use of drama, including motion-picture drama. The community center aims to broaden the mental horizon of the people. No art compares with drama as a widener of the horizon, a means of enriching the mental background. The community center aims to be self-supporting. Motion pictures are a standardized form of entertainment, a labor-saving device, easy ,to install, popular in the extreme; they provide, in fact, a line of least resistance, both for securing attendance and for aiding in the self-support of the community center. All of these facts have been well known for several years. But year after year passes, and the motion picture continues to be a negligible element in public school work and a disappointynent in the community center field. This fact should be acknowledged and its reasons made plain, in order that sooner or later the community may do its part in harnessing motion pictures to social welfare and education. In the following paragraphs, the present situation is described and the causes for it are stated, and a suggestion is made of immediate practicable measures which would have a far-reaching influence upon the educational use of motion pictures. Pictures in Community Centers Most of the community centers use films. Among such centers may be mentioned, in Manhattan, Public School 95, Public School 17, Public School 66, Public School 63, and in Brooklyn the various centers operated by the People's Institute of Brooklyn. No feature of these community centers has been as much criticized as have their motion-picture exhibits. This criticism is directed against three conditions. l._ Many of the films, sensational and melodramatic, are at best simply harmless. 2. Where the programs are non-essential, they tend to consist of geographical scenes and photographs of industrial processes, neither exciting nor particularly instructive. The people stay a.way and the purpose of the exhibition is defeated. 3. The films shown in community centers are often scratched, spotted and apparently frayed and worn. The second and third criticisms have been freely made also against the educational motion-picture exhibits given by the Department of Lectures in school auditoriums. These criticisms are largely justified as statements of fact. Who or what is to blame? Are the community center committees or directors, is the Department of Lectures to blame? Must we conclude that the motion-picture art is not living up to its promise? But in such case, how are we to explain the superiority of commercial shows in Hcensed theaters? Are funds insufficient to procure interesting, educational films in good optical condition? The answer is radically. No, to all these questions. Not one commercial exhibitor in a hundred gives as much attention to the choice of his films as do the community centers or the Department of Lectures. A larger expenditure for the rental of films would not materially improve the programs. And yet — here is the motion-picture art, drawing on the producing talent of many lands, with perhaps 10,000 new film dramas and historical and geographical subjects made every year at the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars. The film art in the past four years has gone in every respect far beyond the most enthusiastic promises which had been made. It has become a true art, resting broadly on its own merits, differing from the spoken drama and yet hardly inferior to it; covering all the fields of human interest, which are to be reached through forums or newspapers or magazines or stereopticon slides. It has become an important vehicle for public discussion, an agency of propaganda for many of the great ideas of life. The United States Supreme Court to the contrary notwithstanding. Yet the educational programs seen in community centers and lecture centers are vastly disappointing. How Centers Get Programs For several years, the great bulk of all motion pictures has been produced by certain large groups of manufacturers, distributed to the public through similar groups of middlemen or "exchanges," exhibited in a fugitive way, and, after a period of four or six months, retired into oblivion. The film exchanges obtain the output of motion pictures for approximately a half-year prior to any given date. No single film exchange has more than a fraction even of this half-year's output. A film exchange purchases the minimum practicable number of copies of any one subject, and aims to get the maximum use of each subject purchased. The typical motion-picture theater changes its program daily, and films are scheduled for long periods in advance, being passed ahead daily from show to show. The rental price of a film diminishes from the first day it is made public to that time when it disappears from circulation ; this without reference to the physical or optical condition of the film. The above remarkable trade system holds the film art in a grip of iron, and insures a virtual monopoly of motion pictures to the commercial shows. The trade system is not a result of a conspiracy or of trusts or of anything that can or should be reached through law or court procedure, but it has been developed in such a way as to produce maximum of quick profit with minimum of risk to exhibitors, exchanges and manufacturers. Now, how does the community or lecture center stand related to the above situation? A little thought will lead to exactly the result of long experience. The commercial show uses films seven days in the week, exhibits them in a routine manner, does not, as a rule, even try to select its program; and such is the method of doing business to which the film exchange is accustomed. But the community center uses films only on one or two or three evenings a week, and by this fact alone it is placed at a disadvantage in the competition for good films. But the community center needs to have special programs. It wants programs for children in the afternoons, programs with a special human or social purpose for adults in the evening. The center is already placed at a disadvantage by the fact that it uses only an intermittent program. But when an effort is made to select films, the community center becomes actually unpopular with the exchange. The exchanges are not stocked or equipped to provide either intermittent programs or selected programs, and the community center is helpless in the face of circumstance. Commercial Theater Rules About four years ago, one of the large groups of film exchanges, the General Film Company, undertook to establish an educational department. This department was supplied with a fairly large number of well-chosen educational films, some of which had a dramatic interest. A harmless assortment of comics was added to the stock. But schools and churches were not prepared at that time to use the department. It was not materially profitable, was only carried on tentatively by the interests in control of the parent enterprise, and at present makes no apparent conscientious effort to serve the interests for whom it was organized. Numerous plans have been announced by commercial companies, and tentative beginnings have been made, but at this time the commercial exchange, organized to supply theaters, holds a practical monopoly. It will now be plain to the reader why the community cen