MR CHURCHILL KILLS THE SNAKE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 39, 13 April 1942, Page 6

MR CHURCHILL KILLS THE SNAKE

SPECIAL FILMS TELL AFRICA'S MILLIONS ABOUT THE WAR Africa's native' peoples are to lie shown up-to-date news reels of the war made specially for tliem so that they can he understood by those to whom a bombing plane and a Bre-n gun arc equally mysterious. These new pictures are the result of 15 years' study of the African's reactions to films made by Mr W. Sellars, of Britain's Colonial Film Unit. Travelling with a mobile cinema unit from one village in Nigeria and elsewhere to another, Mr Sellars found the natives baffled by the swiftness of the sequences. Too much was left to be inferred. The ordinary cinema fan who sees j n shot taken on a battleship appre-1 ciates that the sea is- just off the picture. • The African has to have this explained to him with views of the sea and the ship. So too the Allied cause is explained by parable. The film shows a fight to the death between a mongoose and a snake, Mr Churchill being the mongoose and Hitler the snake. At first the 1 mong'ocse has a tough time of it but by biding his time he kills the snake in the end. A favourite film is "Mr English ftt Home," so arranged that Africans can appreciate through their own family lives how white men live. To-day 18 mobile cinema units are touring the African colonies showing to audiences ranging frcm a few hundred to as many as 15.000. They are staffed by educated native commentators. A complete sound track is'difficult becausc of the variety of languages and dialects which are, however, being gradually introduced.