KINEMA’S FUTURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17158, 29 September 1923, Page 17 (Supplement)

KINEMA’S FUTURE.

VALUE FOR EDUCATION. And now we come to the question “ What is tho kinema going to dor’ (Mr E. V. Lucas writes in concluding a series of articles on that subject m the London “ Times”). ** Is it always to be providing pictorial anodyne f* I cannot believe that it will be content to remain at that. But I have few suggestions to make towards the improvement of the type of film which at present dominates, except that they should be written directly for the kinema by authors acquainted with its marvellous powers. One of the kinema's most precious gifts is its ability to leap backwards and forwards into time anu instantaneously construct either a significant early environment or illustrate a dark foreboding or happy hope. It can also, with equal celerity, heavily underline and isolate whatever needs such treatment. It can -show with the utmost vividness what is fn every character’s mind; it can almost draw pictures of abstract ideas! And not the least interesting of its peculiar advantages is tnat it can appeal to all the world at the same moment with almost equal force—for I take it that Tokio is hardly less familiar with Alary Pickford than is Tooting or Turin. Judicious films might then be very federating things, and I advise the League of Nations to think of this. But probably the kinema managers will require a little financial persuasion to let such alloy in.

The eye receives impressions more rapidly and retains them longer than any other organ of sense, and the kinema in appealing to the eye therefore at an immense advantage. “ We place the world before you,” was the motto of an early film-producing company, and it is true. There is almost no phase of civilisation or Nature that the kinema cannot place before us, even to scenes of life in the depths of the sea. In the illustration of evolution it can do'more in ten minutes than a text book in ten hours. By the use of a magnifying lens it can bring the marvels of insect physiology almost alarmingly to our gaze. No one who saw a recent film of spiders can ever look at a spider again without awe or dare to set a foot on so august a piece of mechanism. I can conceive natural history pie

Nature and curbing the youthful desire to kill and bo cruel. I should like to see as much attention paid to the English fauna all unconscious to the camera as is given to the jungle. The fox in his lair in the morning is not Our Oh hoar, the badger, blundering throuh a Sussex copse, is as well worth photographing as the distant grizzly. So is the otter in his haunts. Herons and owls, stoats and weasels, field mice arid butcher birds—the more that boys know of these ceatures the more will they understand the countryside and delight in it When it comes to the education r*; the young the kinema’s duties are simple. There might very well children’s kinemat, where mixed pro-

grammes of entertainment and instruction would be arranged, and nothing would be shown that was unsuitable. ... I can see tho children’s kinema also a tremendous moral force. An advertisement of an educational work issued some forty years ago consisted of two rows of heads, graded from infancy to old age, the one blamTess ace benign, the other degraded and debased- They were called, I think, “ The child, what will he become t'' and the idea was that you had no chance or achieving respectability and success unless you read the book. Could there be a more fruitful medium for the kinema on which to exercise its marvellous ingenuity? The educational films that arc oveweclly and strictly informative probably nnss some of their usefulness. That -s only natural, for it is human to avoid direct instruction. But indirect instruction can be imparted by tne kinema in one of the pleasantest ways possible, and it should remain m th e mind for a very long while. Children who saw Douglas Fairbanks in “Robin Hood” must have a better idea of Merri© England and castle life than those who did not, and even if they are convinced that outlaws advanced onl v bv leaps and bounds no harm is done. The accurate representation of life in Eng-

land at significant periods from £h« days of woad onwards would make a very intpxesting picture.