THE CINEMA
New Educational Films. At the British Association
" EDUCATION is rapidly becoming more natural, more biological. Most young children are ready to learn a great deal more than most teachers can givcothem about animals. With natural ele- mentary zoology and botany they should begin elementary physiology—how plants and animals live and what health means for them. . . . We have enormous resources now in cheap photography, in films and so forth that even our fathers never dreamt of, to make all this vivid and real." So spoke Mr. H. G. Wells at the British Association last week, and it was fitting that his assertion should be supported by the showing, at other meetings of the session, of the latest group of films from Gaumont-British Instructional ; a group which, on account of its unusual interest, is shortly to appear in the public cinemas.
Though considerable controversy has attended the develop- ment of the educational film, universal agreement has been reached on one important point. While the normal subjects of the curriculum may be illustrated cheaply and efficiently by the blackboard and epidiascope, there are certain subjects that call for a more detailed and life-like analysis than these well-tried instruments can provide. Modern scientific dis- covery and the theories arising from it are, in many cases, hard to convey adequately and interestingly without the help of direct and vivid visual exposition. Biology, with its new emphasis on the importance of microscopic structure, is essen- tially such a subject. And it is on different aspects of biology that four of the new G.B. Instructional films are focussed.
Two of these—Coelenterata and Animals of the Rocky Shore—well demonstrate that the cinema has a contribution specifically its own to make towards the understanding of new knowledge. In these films the beauty of cell-division processes and organic function, perfectly shown by the microscopic camera, is, at times, terrifying in its ordered complexity. In two further films on heredity, made in collaboration with Dr. Julian Huxley, new ground of great interest is broken. Heredity in Animals illustrates, by means of diagrams coupled with actual pictures, the working of the Mendelian laws, while Heredity in Man explains the elementary principles of eugenics. It places in sober yet dramatic contrast examples of the in- heritance of mental deficiency and of physical and intellectual powers. The producers have well realised that in present circumstances any discussion of eugenics can go little further than a plain statement of known facts ; but their exposition of the facts carries a sincerity and a forcefulness which will ensure respect for their film wherever it is shown. Within the narrow commercialism of the film business the public interest is seldom a matter for much concern, and it accord- ingly reflects no small credit on Mr. Bruce Woolfe and his sponsors that this film should have been produced at all.
G.B. Instructional have some zoo films in circulation and another 50 in course of production. They and other English firms have rendered a service to education which educationists themselves have been swift to acknowledge. It is therefore the more disappointing that official interest in the value of such work should appear to be slight. This year the Quota Act comes before Parliament for revision and the Government's new proposals in the matter are already published. The proposals are, to say the least, discouraging to the producer of short films of this kind. When the Act was introduced in 1927 its purpose was to protect the growth of a film industry British not only in personnel but also in outlook and interpreta- tion. The big producing combines have not fulfilled the trust placed in them. They emerge from their first ten years of pro- tection with creative control largely in foreign hands and with the financial instability which was bound to result from a produc- tion policy which can only be described as lunatic. Whatever reputation the British film now possesses has been mainly built up in the educational and documentary fields. But the new legislative proposals postulate only a 5 per cent. quota for British short films of all such films exhibited. In some respon- sible quarters this inadequate recognition of a vital and promising branch of production is regarded as little short of insulting, and it is to be hoped, for the sake of the future prestige of the British cinema, that Parliament will take this view when it
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