THE CINEMA.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 149, 30 July 1914, Page 6

THE CINEMA.

IN RELIGION AND SCIENCE. A series of moving pictures entitled "Creation, from Star Nebula to Perfection, " have been shown twice daily at a London theatre. There was no charge for admission, and there was no collection. The film is in four parts, so that it topk two days for attendances to see it in its entirety. It has been compiled by the International Bible Students' Association, and has taken many years to complete; the Holy Land has been visited by cinematograph experts, and many events familiar to Bible readers have been cinematographed on the spot which Scripture authority indicates as the place where they actually occurred. To the Help of the Church.

This is one of the latest illustrations of the use of the cinema in religion. The Church has not been slow to realise the powerful and durable teaching properties of the cinema, though in this instance tijere is a justifiable apprehension that the subject may not be treated with due reverence.

"The average member of the community fails to comprehend the significance of the new and powerful agency in education," says Carl Hollidav in ' EWorld's Work." "By means of this silent teacher young and old have learned more about the physical, industrial, and social geography of the j world during the past live years than during any previous quarter of a century. Showing Us How to Live. "Far more important, however, is its mission in teaching how to combat disease and death. The animated photograph is an unrivalled vehicle for demonstrating the right way to live. Films are being shown to illustrate the ravages of consumption and the methods by which they cau be arrested. A Cambridge investigator has prepared a lengthy ribbon emphasising the relation of sound teeth to general health and how the teeth may be preserved. " Institutions and organisations have been established to wage campaigns upon subjects of infinite variety by the aid of the cinema. One brings home the diseases propagated and disseminated by the common house-fly; another explains the menace of the unhygienic methods attending the distribution of milk; a third illustrates the proper way to rear the babv.

"The medical profession is a\va*ke to the possibilities of this new means of instruction and illustration. At a recent medical congress tlit piocesses of digestion and bone-grafting were thrown upon the screen. Serial radiographs of the. stomach showing all the stages of digestion were revealed to an-

other gathering of surgeons. "One neurological professor uses twenty-live thousand feet of cinema film in teaching and illustrating ner-

vous and mental diseases. I3y means

of the Einthoven galvanometer a photographic record of the pulsation and sounds of the heart may be obtained, so that the doctor has a continuous record of the fluctuations in j every progress of his patient. Information by the Foot. "Information, .was formerly measured by the page; it may soon be computed by the foot. One firm announces that it has in stock 10,000 feet, of architecture; another states that it has 30,000 feet of natural and applied science;, while a third informs all and sundry that it is able to supply 90,000 feet of, geography. One English firm spent £IO,OOO upon the preparation of 5500 feet of a college course, with which it | is touring the country, while disease I can be purchased in 1000 feet lots! j "The pictures are makUig information cheaper and more easily obtainable than e\*gr before in the world's history. "