MOTION PICTURES

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 55 (Supplement)

MOTION PICTURES

Influence on Children

A large proportion of the crowds that patronise the picture theatres is composed of children. They form the class that is most open to its influence and most responsive to what the moving picture offers. This well-known impression-ableuess of the young mind has set people thinking of the great educational responsibility that is laid upon the picture theatre. Early in its history it was subject to censure. Carefully handled, the values of the film may be far-reaching, especially in the schoolroom. As a teacher of geography, the film cannot be rivalled, for it brings the subject of study before the eye in all its reality. The students are transported to other lands, and their knowledge is gained by seeing. They may also witness nature in its developments; the opening of a flower, the work of a bee and the habits of insect life. Whatever impressions' may l>e gathered from written words, the film cannot be cheated. Its representations of people and life are true ones.

Not only in the schoolroom, but perhaps in the future home also, it may be made possible' to secure life in motion by some simple and easy means, just as now, still-life pictures are obtained by the hand camera, and if the lightning development of screen animation can be taken as a precedent, that time will not be far distant.