Some Educational Films.
To-day Shakespeare is reeled off a spool, and human life taught at the end of a crank. You may travel over land and sea without leaving your seat and see great personages of the world perform their mighty deeds, and unconsciously knowledge of life and the world is derived which makes a difference in the conception of things surrounding us.
The average member of a community fails to comprehend the significance of the new and powerful agency in education. All this means a revolution in pedagogy, the scrapping of text-books in favour of the film. It means a vividness where before had been vagueness. It means a true visualization and realization of life, where hitherto an indefinite printed description of it was acquired. In this country gatherings of teachers have been vividly impressed by animated photography. By means of the silent teacher, young and old have learned more about the physical, industrial and social geography of the world during the past few years than during any previous quarter of a century. It brings vividly before our eyes the idea of intense cold, atmospheric conditions, blizzards, and life peculiar to the regions around the Poles; and, again, the sweltering heat, vegetation, methods of living and transport in the tropics. One is brought face to face with the primitive life, habits, and customs of the aborigines of the least known corners of the world; while even life immediately around us is revealed in a manner which hitherto has been impossible.
Take a film about the volcano, of which most children have heard but never seen. It would explain that a volcano throws up smoke, calcined dust, red-hot stones, and melted matter called lava. The summit is hollowed out in a great excavation having the shape of a funnel, sometimes miles in circumference. The principal volcanoes could be shown, as Vesuvius, near Naples; Etna, in Sicily; Hecla, in Iceland.
A curtain of smoke filling the orifice of the crater denotes the forthcoming eruption. When the air is calm the smoke rises vertically to nearly a mile in height, finally spreading out like a huge blanket, cutting off the rays of the sun, and sinking down on the volcano, covering it with a dense smoke-cloud. A huge sheaf of fire bursts from the crater to a height of 6,000 ft., and the heavy cloud is illuminated by the fiery red of the sky. Millions of sparks dart out like vivid lightning to the summit of the blazing sheaf. These sparks, so small from a distance, are, in reality, incandescent masses of stone, and of a sufficient momentum to crush the most solid structure in their fall.
From the bowels of the mountain through the volcanic chimney ascends a flux of melted mineral substance, or lava, pouring out into the crater, forming a lake of dazzling fire in the sun. Through the crevasses as well as over the edges of the crater the lava flows in streams. The fiery current, formed of dazzling and paste-like matter, similar to melted metal, advances slowly; the front of the lava stream represents a rampart on fire. Animals and human beings flee before it, but all objects stationary are lost. Trees are seen to blaze a moment on contact with the lava and sink down reduced to charcoal; the thickest walls impeding its progress are calcined and collapse; the hardest rocks are vitrified, melted. The flow of lava eventually subsides; the subterranean vapours, forced by the enormous pressure of the solid mass, escape with greater violence than ever, carrying with them whirlwinds of fine dust floating in sinister clouds and sinking down upon the neighbouring plain. Finally the mountain ceases its activity and peace reigns again for an indefinite time.
Visualize the terrible eruption of Mt. Etna in Sicily of two hundred years ago. A dark night preceded the storm. Trees swayed like reeds buffeted by the wind; people fled to avoid being crushed under the ruins of their dwellings. They lost their footing on the quaking ground and fell. Mt. Etna burst into a fissure ten miles long, and along this fissure broke forth a number of volcanic mouths, vomiting clouds of black smoke and calcined sand. Soon seven of these mouths were united in one abyss emitting cinders and lava.
Torrents of lava poured from all the crevasses of the mountain down upon the plain, destroying houses, forests and crops. The stream reached the walls of Catania and spread over the country. There, as if to demonstrate its strength to the terrified Catanians, it tore away a hill and transplanted it some distance; it lifted in one mass a field planted with vines and let it float for some time, until the green was reduced to charcoal and disappeared.
A fierce battle ensued between lava and water. The lava presented a perpendicular front nearly a mile in length and forty feet high. At the touch of that burning wall, which continued plunging further and further into the waves, enormous masses of vapour rose with terrible hissings, darkened the sky with their thick clouds, and fell in a salt rain over the region. In a few days the lava had made the limits of the shore recede three hundred and fifty yards.
The stream, swollen with new tributaries, grew from day to day and approached the town. The inhabitants could be seen from the top of the walls watching the implacable scourge. The lava finally reached the ramparts. The fiery flood rose slowly but it rose ceaselessly. It finally touched the top of the walls, whereupon, yielding to pressure, they were overthrown for the length of forty-five yards, and the stream of fire penetrated the town.
The last scene was that of the inhabitants fleeing in terror. What a realistic geography lesson, never to be forgotten, would a film of this description make!
The films can show anything from the mining of coal to the manufacture of the needle; from the weaving of a dainty handkerchief to the building of a battleship. The films projected would be purely educational, though there are numerous incidents shown, which amuse and entertain, in addition to imparting information. A particular film series of an educational and scientific nature is now available.
The Smith-Urban “Kinemacolour” series depicting the budding flowers and the opening of blossoms—which in nature occupies several days—are disclosed with uncanny realism in less than two minutes.
Marvels of the universe, a scientific film of nature-study and general knowledge, finds many patrons.