DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 260, 1 August 1939, Page 6

DOCUMENTARY FILMS

Large Audience At Dominion Museum PRODUCTION FROM RUSSIA Every eeat in the lecture hall of the Dominion Museum, and some extra ones as well, was occupied last night for the screening of three films by the Wellington Film Institute, so that about 400 people are now sufficiently interested in the work of the institute to brave exceedingly inclement weather to eee one of its P r( !' grammes. Among them was the High Commissioner for the United Kingdom, Sir Harry Batterbee, who is assisting in the procuring of films. The principle film was “The Edge or the World,” described as a documentary drama, a fictional story based on the fact of the evacuation of the lonely island of Foula, one of the Shetlands. After their people have occupied the island tor hundreds of years the _ crofters find it impossible to earn a livelihood because steam trawlers from the mainland take the fish from their fishing grounds, and their supply of peat for fuel is exhausted. Some sturdy souls want to fight on in their rugged surroundings; others, more far-sighted, are for accepting the inevitable and petitioning the laird to obtain their evacuation. While telling the story of their decision the film shows how the islanders live, love and die in an aweinspiring but beautiful environment, till they have to desert their homes. “'Reformer of Nature,” a film of almost feature length which ha>s been obtained from Russia by exchanging a New Zealand Government production for it, described the fruit hybridization activities of Michurin, the famous Russian horticulturist. The audience was assisted by an annotated programme and by spoken interpretation by Mr. V. Zotov, of the New Zealand Plant Research Bureau, but the full implication of the film will not be conveyed till it is more carefully prepared for New Zealand presentation. * Many attended only to see “Night Mail,” a production by the British Post Office, illustrating the journey of the postal train that travels nightly from London to Edinburgh, picking up and dropping mail as it speeds through the dark and stopping only once, briefly, in the Midlands. Sight, sound and dialogue have all been used by the director, Basil Wright, to weave romance about a small part of one of the great achievements of civilized man, the postal service.