Motion Pictures Used With Success In Illustrating Courses In Anthropology--Film Library To Be Set Up at Peabody

According to an announcement made yesterday by J. A. Haeseler '23, director of the University Film Foundation, the Anthropology Department has definitely undertaken the introduction of motion pictures into the regular curriculum of the Department.

The decision was reached in consideration of the success of experimental films used during the current year to illustrate several courses in the Anthropology Department under R. B. Dixon, E. A. Hooten, and A. M. Tozzer '00, professors of Anthropology.

Films used in Professor Dixon's course on Oceanica depict the intimate lives and habits of the Polynesians, Melanesians, and inhabitants of the East Indies. Tribal dances and customs such as fire walking in the Fiji Islands, and tatooing and tapa making in Samoa, are shown in detail.

Professor Hooton has been using films to illustrate his lectures on various species of monkeys and apes, and of racial human types. Especially valued by the Film Foundation and the department of Anthropology are the motion pictures used by Professor Hooton to show the habits and customs of African pygmies, believed to be the most primitive men now alive.

The industries and religious rites of different peoples, varying in character from Eskimos in Arctic regions to the black races of Central Africa, are subjects for the films now being used by Professor Tozzer to illustrate Anthropology A. Among the notable scenes are those depicting the ceremony of milking the sacred cows of a negro tribe in the Dark Continent, and Eskimos constructing their igloos.

The Film Foundation, in view of the success and expected continued use of films in the Anthropology Department, has undertaken to catalogue all films of value to the Anthropology Department, and to install them in the form of a permanent library in the University Museum.