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The author argues that the phenomenon of the Hamlet Complex, pertaining to the ambiguity of the Shakespeare character which derives from the fact that the audience never really know when he is performing and when he is revealing himself in reality, operates in many documentary films in which the character within the film is one who is used to performing and in which the director's chief format is either that of the live performance or that of the live interview. Representatives of these films, which include "Gimme Shelter," "Primary" and "Lonely Boy," convey performers who are acting within the framework of the interview-concert-interview format.

The article focuses on the outline of some of the principles and explore ways in which film made by ethnographic team in the U.S. The aim of ethnographic film is to preserve in the mind of the viewer that the structure of the events is recording as interpreted by the participants which is a difficult task. Editing is another selection process and a second restructuring known as skillful editing can lead an audience to almost any desired conclusion. According to tradition, filmmaking has fallen into three basic methodological categories namely objective recording, scripting and reportage.

This article examines the effects of documentary films as teaching devices, particularly on visual education. In this type of film which can be entertaining as well as didactic, some attempt is made to keep more strictly to the values and facts of real life, and to the details of the lives and occupations of ordinary people. Two sub-classes of documentary films are worth noting. The first one finds a straight-forward factual representation of some real life situation. In the other sub-class are included what might be called social documentaries.

The use of family life and mental health films is increasing in community programs for adults as well as in marriage and family life education classes for young people. Persons who show and discuss these films, however, seldom have an adequate opportunity to evaluate them before use. Many studies have indicated the value of educational films in conveying factual information. Very few studies have been concerned with attitude change as a result of film viewing. The studies which have been done indicate inconclusive results. The major problem in film evaluation is in the development of some method by which films may be studied in an objective manner. If the concepts in a film are well portrayed and understood, no problems should arise; but there is always the possibility that individuals may misinterpret the meaning of a scene, perhaps acquiring unfortunate misconceptions. If films are to be shown effectively, it is important for persons using them to understand clearly the objectives of each film they discuss. Each film in general use should be studied scene by scene by a group of professional people using the film, in order to determine what the film is attempting to convey to the audience.

The article presents news related to education in the United States. The United Nations Charter pledges its signatories to the promotion of international co-operation in education. The Association for Childhood Education International has revisted its list of children's books. The Columbia University Press has inaugurated a new film service to be called the Columbia University Educational Films. Encylopaedia Britannica Films has released a series of six teaching filmstrips on "Clothing and Shelter."

The article cites a study that aims to discover the contribution, if any, which might be made to an understanding and application of principles of biological science, as a result of the use of educational films. The experimental design included a control group, an experimental group in which films were routinely shown, and an experimental group in which principles were stressed. Although one may accept certain objectives of instruction, there are no guarantees that the learning of students is always in the dimension indicated by the stated objective. In the study cited, the high and low groups achieved statistically significant superior results under the second experimental condition, whereas, the middle group did not.

The article focuses on the film works of the American Museum of Natural History. This museum has been a pioneer in many fields. One that has had far-reaching effects is in the use of motion-picture films for educational purposes. More than thirty years ago one of the museum curators was filming bird life in Florida. As long ago as 1911 the museum was using motion pictures regularly in auditorium lectures given for groups of school children. In fact, it is considered the first institution to use educational films regularly. Today, more than a third of a century later, this museum has a large library of both silent and sound films available to any educational group in the country. One of the aims in this work has been to build a reference library of films depicting wild animal life in different parts of the world and the lives of primitive peoples. The nucleus of this library was formed in 1912 when Paul J. Rainey, one of the early African game hunters and explorers, brought back the first of the African films on lion hunting.

The article discusses some of the recent developments in the educational film field. After twenty years of chaos in the educational film field the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation has given financial assistance to the production and distribution of school films, which include productions with aspects of reality comparable to the so-called documentaries. In December 1937 the Motion Picture Project of the American Council on Education received a grant of $135,000 to finance a three-year research program. The members of the project have been evaluating and cataloguing existing films and are expected to suggest new fields for educational film production. Another distribution agency partly financed by the Rockefeller Foundation is the Museum of Modern Art Film Library. This organization has a valuable him-reference library, which contains film books, magazines and stills from nearly every country in the world. The individual items in the series consist of excerpts from old and new motion pictures illustrating the artistic and technical evolution of the motion picture.

The article discusses the role motion pictures can play in education. The motion picture which until now has been almost exclusively devoted to the industry of entertainment is in fact a machine tool for the art of expression, capable of service in the saying of whatever men have to say. Its functions are parallel to, but greater in potential scope than, the printing press which has these several centuries been the chief mechanical servant of education. Up to the year 1936, not less than 50,000 full-length theatrical films had been produced. It is estimated that there are three times that many "shorts" and newsreels. The total number of so-called educational or instructional films produced to date does not exceed 10,000. During the year 1936, the Hollywood companies produced 2,500 films of which about 500 were feature pictures, some 1,500 were short subjects, and about 500 were newsreels. Many reasons have been advanced to explain the tremendous gap between the development of the motion picture for the theater and the extent of its use in education. One of the most obvious reasons for this situation is the fact that theaters are run for profit while the schools are not. A second reason is that schools are conservative. They are slow to buy expensive equipment which they feel is not indispensable to their work.

The article focuses on a new approach to civic education through documentary films. It reports the real world as an organized observation. In an important sense it brings the stuff of our own lives into the school. It brings the material of civic education to the teacher. The Grierson school of documentary film producers carried out their first experiments under the aegis of the Empire Marketing Board. They were a group of young men and women drawn from the fields of social science, psychology, art, journalism, and education. They had a definite objective. It was to bring some of the power of the cinema to bear on the real world of everyday work in the Empire. Education has a right to an account of the stewardship of the public services and the public utilities. If the industries were not willingly supplying it, the educators should be demanding it of them. Modern education, if it is to be modern, must devise some means to realize the objective of giving men their bearings in a world where purely intellectual knowledge is no longer sufficient. Education must give us the bases of judgment on the problems of citizenship which are not based on the unachievable aim of knowing all the facts. Education must provide a service of information which organizes and makes intelligible the findings of the expert.

The article focuses on the importance of the motion pictures in social hygiene. Social hygiene is a subject, which naturally lends itself to interpretation through the motion picture. This fact has made it possible for social-hygiene agencies to disseminate to millions of people in all parts of the world social-hygiene information, which might not have reached them in any other way. Social-hygiene films have been made for various purposes--for public information in support of the social-hygiene movement; for education and protection of the individual in personal health; to provide knowledge concerning the facts of biology and reproduction; and as a means of bringing new developments and techniques to the attention of medical and other professional groups. Two types have been developed--drama films and lecture or documentary films. In the United States, the American Social Hygiene Association has been chiefly responsible for making social-hygiene films and getting them before the public. While recognizing the value of educational efforts, the Association as a national voluntary agency concerned with health conservation, has always been especially interested in motion pictures as a means of educating the general public, or so-called mass education.

Presents the schedule of the 1966 convention of the Western Speech Association. Public address on the rhetoric of youth in controversy; Role of documentary in times of crisis; Speech correction audiology.

The article focuses on the public opinion on the motion picture "Crossfire." Crossfire dealt with the problem of anti-Semitism in particular, and prejudice in general. This in itself was a significant event, for it would mean that a major film studio was producing a film for the first time dealing with this serious social problem-and dealing with it not as a documentary him for a limited audience, but in terms of the normal screen and motion-picture audience who come to see films in regular motion-picture theaters. The facts about the picture can be stated briefly. Crossfire is a screen play written by John Paxton and directed by Edward Dmytryk. The Boston audience may have had a large proportion of Catholics in attendance. In Denver, the majority probably were Protestant in religion. In both places, our own observer, Herbert Lizt, supervised the distribution of the questionnaires and scored them. He noted in both cities a considerable amount of enthusiasm, excitement, and oral approval given to the picture by the audiences. Motion-picture theater officials, and we ourselves, were surprised at the large proportion of returns of the Questionnaires.

Pays tribute to John Grierson, a pioneer in documentary film making. Family background; Educational attainment; Start of Grierson's film career in Britain.

This article discusses the trends of documentary films. The documentary film has been a boxing ring for experts in their discussions as to what a documentary film really is, ever since it first attained notice on the educational horizon. Action-minded Charles Hoban declared that the documentary is "produced to dramatize some significant social situation and to develop an awareness of the condition and a willingness to do something about it." Just previous to the war, a flood of sponsored films appeared on the market. The film-hungry educational world booked these pictures without regard to selection or value. It was soon realized, however, that most of the sponsored product crowned its audience with messages so that the educational value of the film was lost and it became, in effect, nothing more than a moving picture advertisement. The greatest impetus to the documentary or educational film was given from the period of 1940 through 1945. Training divisions of the armed forces were directly responsible for this. The total number of films produced and shown by the United States Army and the Air Forces is not known, but an assumption based on the Navy program, showed that at least five to eight million prints were made.

The article presents an effectiveness research on impact of documentary broadcasts upon the public mind. The function of documentary broadcasts is to inform, clarify and impart ideas and each documentary is produced in the knowledge that its success will be measured by these yardsticks. The first step in this effectiveness research has been to outline in consultation with the producer's objectives of the documentary. The script is subjected to an intensive content analysis to obtain breakdown of the major informational and ideological points contained in the broadcast. These points are then converted into questions of fact and opinion and administered to listener panels both before and after hearing the broadcast. A comparison of responses of each listener after hearing the program with those answers, which he registered prior to such exposure gives some measure of the documentary's effectiveness. It is possible to analyze whether program did a particularly influential job or fell short of its objective.

Like other American homes, the home of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck went to war From the Disney Studios poured training films for the Armed Forces and animated cartoons prodding and instructing the home front. Out of these strikingly successful efforts has come a new impetus for the use of animated cartoons as an educational device in peacetime. In this article Walt Disney enthusiastically supports Mickey's professional possibilities. But it also describes the obstacles in the way of the educational film and his analysis will serve as a suggestive guide to all those concerned with putting the film to work as a teacher. The Disney Studios have watched and pondered the factors outlined here, with sympathetic interest and with the desire to participate in developments. The problems are natural and inevitable to the talents and techniques which raised the animated picture from a peep-show curiosity to the stature of a major art-form. It is natural also that the educational world should be anxious to make use of a powerful and versatile facility.

In 1944 over 20,000,000 people in the Great Britain saw free film shows provided by the government, and given outside the normal entertainment of the cinema circuits. In addition, the public cinemas have shown, during their ordinary programs, twelve government films lasting 15 minutes and several feature length documentaries which were distributed on normal commercial contract arrangements with the film trade. Behind these facts lies a remarkable story of the development of the use of the film medium for purposes of social service. This development is, perhaps, the Great Britain's major contribution to world cinema. The backbone of the informational film system in the country is the documentary film movement. The rapid developments which have taken place during the war result from the fact that foundations of the work, together with much of the super-structure, were already in existence in September 1939. Today, British Film Division handles all films for governmental purposes, those required by other departments as well as those initiated by itself.

In this article the author records the emergence and growth of motion pictures, and evaluates their significance in war and peace. According to the author, documentary films have become one of the great weapons of education. Documentaries are serving nearly as many communal purposes as there are informational and educational needs. This homemade product is only a fragment of the world-wide production of documentaries. A tremendous power for good or evil has attained maturity. A new industry, a new medium for mass appeal, a new technique of child and adult instruction is being perfected through this genre of motion picture. The author believes that public does not go to movies solely for escapist entertainment and it is not true that it consistently rejects non-fiction fare. In Europe the documentary production was far better integrated into the scheme of film production and exhibition. The early documentary makers of the continent worked chiefly with surface values, the rhythmic movements of machinery and the implications of garbage cans.

As a method of disseminating information the cinema must be compared for efficacy with the radio, the press and the poster. The advantages which cinema can claim over radio are, of course, the completion of aural impressions with visual ones. Against this, it must be conceded that radio reaches its audiences in their own homes, and in their own country, which the sender may well be unable to enter. The main point where the movie falls behind its three rivals is in the length of time required for film-production. The article discusses war efforts of Britishers and significance of their documentaries in these efforts for the second World War. The British documentary film, as a consciously-planned type of production, dates back to 1929, when John Grierson produced for Atlas Film Co. an anglicized version of a Russian film and, for the Empire Marketing Board, the film "Drifters." Grierson has always been the first to acknowledge his debt to the Russians. The article also presents guidelines for construction of documentaries related to wartime.

Since the arrival of sound pictures, fact films had been drearisome indeed. Fiction was supreme; only rarely had motion picture producers essayed to let fact stand on its own. In Kansas City a pioneer station, WDAF, took a first hesitant step on the death of the former U.S. president Woodrow Wilson: all day long it broadcast Chopin's "Funeral March." And when U.S. President Warren G. Harding made his last swing across the country, speaking via some of the first inter-station hook-ups, radio took on new meaning for millions of Americans. Techniques for presenting fact have been progressively evolving ever since the development of sound films, thanks to a group of insurgent young film technicians working throughout the world-the proponents of "documentary films." Of results, the public has already seen brief flashes, in the articulate releases of the March of Time, the eloquent government film, The River, and a scattering of other pictures. United States industries are beginning to adopt documentary techniques to portray industrial processes and stir up interest in theft products. As the screen handles more factual material, the public will probably develop a critical sense sufficient to establish fair standards. Flagrant propaganda should disappear from the screen as the public becomes more articulate in its demand for full and impartial treatment of facts.

The article discusses how to encourage the habit of reading among school children. Before taking a class trip, students should be made to read about the site they have to visit. Guest speakers can be invited to the classrooms for panel discussions. Documentary films can be a substitute for field trips, and can develop the habit of reading among students. Reading can also be encouraged as a hobby. Students can be motivated to read for personal development.

Reviews several educational films on industrial automation. "Towards Automation in Farming"; "A Site Better"; "Tanker."

Discusses a study which examined the effects on ratings of a speech training session in combination with a kind of training film. Review of related literature; Data and methods used; Findings and its implications.