NATURE FILMED

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 131, 30 November 1933, Page 8

NATURE FILMED

TOURIST ENTERPRISE

• The arts that present natural objects on, a flat surface were . greatly , reinforced last century by the; camera', but still more this century by the motion camera. In spite of the flat surface, the motion camera gave life to natural objects, and the sound picture development of the motion camera has intensified that life. Application of this art to natural objects is still in its infancy, and the sounds of nature (birds, waterfalls, etc.) are more often imitated than recorded.

Nevertheless, the motion picture is beginning to place the natural objects and the human life and wild life of New Zealand upon a flat surface in a very vivid manner; and those who sec these pictures lcaru much more 'about living action than could possibly, be told them in an article or a drawing or painting. • ■

What do the joy-seekers at Mt. Cook do? Often it has been explained in writing that, inter alia, they ski. But nothing written can", bring home the joys and. woes and living action of skiing and snow f uti like a moving picture. The Tourist and Publicity Department has a Mt. Cook film that can be packed away in a small insignificant roll, but which, when machined, becomes magical and emanates a glorious panorama of Alps and snow and > ski courses, of laughing - girls and men, glorious horses (some of them towing skiers), wise: old keas, arid a^hundred and one odd glimpses; of human action iv Nature's environment, ' explaining exactly what joy-seekers :can' do at Mt. Cook. This miracle of,.ther celluloid film has become a. commonplace, yet it remains a miracle that such a prosaic thing can embody and reproduce so fair a scene.! Another story of action, tellable only in this way, is the West Coast gold-seek'fer" working his cradle and his dish.

Bowcn 'Palls at one point in its descent hits a ledge--or pocket and the waters fly up (with plume effect) before they contin.uo their if all. This "waterfall, that 'falls upwards" has been talked about, often enough, but on the screen you see it, and much of its beauty. If so much can bo done in the infancy of an art which has not ydt conquered , natural sounds, and whic^i is only beginning t'o:tackle natural colour, what wonders must the fur ture have in. store? ;;

The Tourist and Publicity Department's exhibition at the Artcrait Theatre yesterday was wonderful, enough, and should popularise the Alps, Fiordland, the "Golden West Coast," arid Maori life (including a poi dance and chapt). both at home and abroad. These New Zealand publicity films contain much that is new even to the New Zealnnder, and they convey enough of reality to tempt any lover of the beautiful to visit (or revisit) the Dominion's rare places.