THE CINEMA
International Documentary Film Festival at Edinburgh IT was fitting that Scotland should be the venue of the first inter- national festival of documentary films ever to be held ; for it was a Scotsman, John Grierson, who founded what is now known as the documentary movement, and many of the earlier documentaries, not least his own Drifters, dealt with Scottish subjects. The enterprise of the Edinburgh Film Guild, under Norman Wilson and Forsyth Hardy, in organising the Festival, proved the immense value which must be attached to the film society movement in this country. The Guild has succeeded, during fifteen years, in maintaining a large membership of Edinburgh folk interested in the artistic and social value of the film, to such good purpose that it now has a large build- ing, complete with library, club-room and a fully equipped cinema.
Despite the many counter-attractions of the Edinburgh Festival proper, the seventeen performances of documentary films were fully attended, often to overflowing. The films shown, which numbered over eighty and came from eighteen different countries, were in- evitably variable in quality and value, but the general standard was remarkably high—not least in the films from such countries as Poland and Yugoslavia, which, under severe limitations of experienced per-
sonnel and deficiencies of equipment, appear to be using documentary films with vigour and realism to assist in solving the problems of reconstruction. Indeed, the bulk of the films in the Festival proved conclusively the correctness of Grierson's analysis of documentary purpose in his speech at the inaugural showing. He pointed out that the documentary film must be considered as an instrument of public service, of education and, not least, of artistic expression ; that the documentary is not designed merely to report on events but to interpret them and to inspire action ; and that aesthetic and technical experiment is a continuing necessity. Of the many films shown, by far the most notable was Italy's Paisa —a full-length film by Rossellini, the director of Open City. Paisa, which uses a new technique by which a series of short, unconnected episodes are linked together, not by a trick but by their joint manifes- tation of a central idea, may indeed prove to be the most important and influential film since Eisenstein's Potemkin. It is to be hoped that it will get an early showing in London and elsewhere. There were several other long films of interest and importance. Jenning's Cumberland Story (Great Britain) -tells a sober and often moving tale of work in the mines. Rouquier's Farrebique is an un- compromisingly intimate picture of peasant-life in South Western France ; many of its sequences reach the highest peaks of filmic expression. Most of the films shown were of course shorts. Youth Railway (Yugoslavia), though sometimes rough in technique and marred by a stilted commentary in English, triumphs over both obstacles by its sincere and purposive delineation of thousands of young men and women working to open up their country's com- munications system. The film carries conviction because of the cheerful determination, the belief in their country's future, revealed by these young folk. The emphasis on youth was indeed a gratifying aspect of the whole programme of films ; Margaret Thompson's Learning By Experience (England) is a charming and wholly expert study of the behaviour of young children. Australia's School in the Mail Box reveals in some detail the educational methods, involving lessons by post and by radio, which have been developed to serve scattered mid distant communities in the Commonwealth. Denmark Grows Up describes the Danish education and child-welfare system with modesty, humour and pathos ; there is an unforgettable sequence showing a school for deaf and dumb children. Denmark also shows, in The Seventh Age, how it cares for old people.
Other films dealt with more specialised fields. Painleves Assassins De L'Eau Douce (France) is a fascinating study of jungle law on the river bed, with some superb micro-photography ; and Latitude and Longitude (Great Britain), in Technicolor, suggests new and exciting possibilities in the teaching of geography. All these films, and many others from the U.S.A., Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa and New Zealand, provide a general picture of documentary effort which film-makers everywhere will do well to ponder. In this country particularly this Festival should lead the documentary group to consider carefully whether it is not becoming a little too contented
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