FILM REALISM

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 12, 16 January 1933, Page 5

FILM REALISM

OBJECT LESSONS

NEW EDUCATIVE CONCEPJj

LIFE IN TABLOID FORM

Generally speaking, the cinema has not been developed with "an educational bias." ' Ninety-nine per cent, of films have by no means an educational bias; and even the small fraction madefor educational purposes has been made only after the style of the ordinary cinema. Yet already educational films' have been proved to possess peculiarlyeducative qualities. They nave' the immense advantage of, teaching byexamples—of educating -through eye aswell as ear and brain. How great, then,, should be the educative value of film, when the cinema inventors and operators have imbibed the educational bias/ and have devoted all theii technical skill and their improvising ability to hitting the public in the intelligenes instead of merely on the senses! Anyone who goes to a theatre in this town .and sees a nature study picture | must realise that a film has a wonderful way of telling you all about it. Wild bird life pictures are built up by, many cinema visits to the wood. And, very many visits to the bush would be the price you would have to pay if you sought personally, by bird-watching, to gather equivalent knowledge. • Yet you need not do that. For a couple of shil-, lings you will see in a few minutes the built-up film story of many, many observational expeditions. 'It maybe true that lies can be built into a wild, life film. On the other hand, it can. be strictly true—and, when true, realistic in a sense that the old ."object lesson" of the schools could never hope to attain.

That "the film, through, its power of? creating experience, offers a mode of learning almost equivalent to first-hand experience" is one of the conclusions drawn from experiment with educa-. tional films which the Newton Abbot W.E.A. Film Society recently conducted, in the county of Devon. The report of the- experiment is briefly reviewed in "The Listener." With the aid of portable apparatus, twelve villages in North Devon were shown a series of programmes of films chosen for their educational value and centring round the theme of "Man and his Environment." The experiment lasteyl six weeks, during half of which time silent" films were used and during the other half sound films. The .audience at*1 traeted consisted "chiefly of those wh» would normally have come to a village W.E.A. meeting," a small charge be." mg made for admission. The audiences took part in discussion after the films" had been shown, and also (to the larze; proportion of 62 per cent.) returned answers to questionnaires designed toj test how far the facts conveyed by tha films were retained in the memory. Tha results showed that information can be conveyed by films accurately, rapidly, and in many cases almost "unconscious-

According to "The New Learning,"* "the complexity of modern conditions the broadening of our experience so tnaiLit becomes more specialised every year, the range of the subjects included in the curriculum, and the widening of our interests through modern invention, have tended to make education more abstract than concrete, a matter of verbal summary rather than of experience. The film seems to obi viate this in no small measure." In; conclusion the-report suggests that, while the film may implement the wort of the teacher, that will be but a minor aspect of its application as education.' "The proper use of the film is likely to produce a revolution in our concepts of education." Experiments are require ed in the creation of a new type of film, wliich is not merely intended to be an adjunct to the schoolroom or the tutorial class, but arises from the needs of "that vast multitude of men, women, and