The Cinema
[KrsoswAv HALL CINEMA EXHIBITIONS FOR CHILDREN] A SERIES of six programmes of instructional films is being presented monthly at the Kingsway Hall. The films have not been specially made for children, but they have been passed by a committee of head-masters and head-mistresses of L.C.C. schools.
Last Saturday morning a delightfully varied selection of pictures was shown to a hall packed with children of from seven to fourteen years of age. The audience is especially reminded that it may laugh, talk, fidget and eat sweets, to its heart's content, but silence reigned as there appeared on the screen a series of Pathe pictures of some of man's greatest achievements. Pictures of a complicated invention to make use of tidal power (fuel for the imagination of the inventive-minded), of the Pyramids, of New York sky-scrapers, of the Great Wall of China, were Ricked before our eyes— but so quickly that there was scarcely time to take in even a superficial impression of them. We were next shown a pretty film of the domestic life of the dipper, that Spartan little white-breasted bird which nests in the bank of a torren- tial stream. After some panoramic views of the Maritime Provinces of Canada, there followed an admirable nature film of the Emperor Moth. We saw at close quarters the entire life story of one of these exquisite creatures, from the time, of its escape from its egg as a caterpillar—there was an amazing photograph of it wriggling free from its first hairy skin—through the cocoon stage, until one May morning it
awoke, trembling in anticipation of what life held in store for it, as a beautiful bright-eyed Emperor Moth. Finally, we were shown an excellent historical picture of the life of Livingstone.
In spite of the extreme cold in the Kingsway Hall—it felt as though there were no heating arrangement of any descrip- tion—the whole programme was thoroughly appreciated by its juvenile audience ; but whether it was of great educa- tional value is another matter. The captions of the films shown, not having been specially written for children, were neither simple nor explicit, and, even if they had been intelli- gible to the very young, the audience was scarcely given time to read them. There is not space here to go into the question of the future of films in education, but the response which this experiment of the British Instructional Films, Ltd., has met with (there is an overwhelming demand for seats) shows clearly that if suitable instructive films were made for children, there would most certainly be a market for them. C. S.
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