Source Notes

Professor J.Joseph Huthmacher of the Tempie University will hold its University of Delaware informs us that 5th annual Anthropological and the first four programs in the AHA Documentary Film Conference on Feature Film Project are now complete March 8-11,1972. The Conference seeks and ready for distribution. They are: to bring together persons interested Becket ,Martin Luther ,Juarez and The in the use of behavioral recording Emperor and the General. Each program media,including film,videotape and consists of a Super 8mm sound cartridge sound tape for the portrayal of the and a book of readings designed to human condition.place the film excerpt in historical perspective. For information write: Teaching Film Custodians, 25 West 43rd The Program in Ethnographic Film, a Street ,New York N.Y. 10036. committee of the American Anthropological—~—-—-— Association ,promotes the study and use Eric Boehm,President of the American of visual media in anthropology . A Bibliographical Center and Clio Press Newsletter is published three times a in Santa Barbara,has encouraged the year and is available from: Editor, work of the Committee with a donation PIEF,Room 200 South Hall, Temple of $25' ll is a noble example and Mr. University ,Philadelphia,Pa.,19122. Boehm has our thanks. **** SOURCE NOTES **** In this regular feature of the Newsletter we will pass along suggestions to our readers for sources of film and ideas for using it effectively. In this issue we recommend a source of information on film and historical scholarship. The British Universities Film Council is concerned with fostering the use of film for teaching and research within the British academic community. Their journal, University Vision, presents numberous articles relating to techniques of film use in general (e.g. W. Mateen, "Teaching by Film," University Vision No. 6, January 1971) and on specific academic fields from cardiology to American studies (e.g. M.Gidley, "Some American Studies Films at Sussex," University Vision No. 6,January 1971). The first number of University Vision, dated February 1968, and currently available in reprint, was devoted solely to problems of film and historical scholarship. Several of the articles comment on why film as a medium has been slow in winning the approval of scholars. When compilations and documentaries were frequently found lacking in accuracy many historians were led to reject film material as a whole; it was "rather like condemning the printing press because of the many books published which pervert the truth'.' The fault, J.A.S. Grenville and N. Pronay assure us, "lies with the authors and not with the process." They go on to outline some of the difficulties involved in work at Leeds University, producing documentary films for classroom use. David Adams notes the "popular notion" that films are used mostly by teachers too lazy to prepare for class, then refutes it by describing the arduous and time consuming process of finding the most effective films to use in teaching American Studies at Keele University. Several of the articles deal with film archives and the unique problems encountered by those who labor to preserve film and make it available for the historian. Reprinted with the above articles is the edited transcript of a conference on "Film and History" held at University College London in April 1968. The introduction by the chairman, A. J. P. Taylor points out clearly the need for historians to become active in film production. "Film," Taylor warns us, "as well as being very useful, is a very dangerous instrument for historical study." The first interest of the commercial producer is not creating an historically accurate and objective document, and historians that are called in as consultants "are used to add prestige to what is basically a non-historical approach." The conference was concerned primarily with problems of historians in film production and the transcribed discussions center on the results achieved by J. A. S. Grenville and N. Pronay in their film on the Munich Crisis and Dr. R. L. Schuursma in his film on Anton Mussert, the Dutch National Socialist leader. All problems of production including the technical and the budgetary aspects are discussed; but perhaps the most interesting for American scholars are the comments on methodology·* Balancing the...