When I was in grade school, I had the good fortune to benefit from the fact that the Russians, via Sputnik, had scared the bejesus out of America, prompting our leaders to the very sensible conclusion that we needed more smart people. That meant that for a brief, shining moment, schools received lavish funding with the aim of cranking out more scientists and engineers. Fortunately, the arts were not neglected, as we had to prove to the commies that we were also enlightened and civilized. Although most of the politics behind this windfall were lost on me, I delightfully went through my 1-12 grade education in a system that was well funded and loaded with really wonderful learning tools.
Films made up a big part of this. Our elementary school had a very neat film library. One of these was a short film called Why Man Creates that won an Oscar in 1968. The filmmaker responsible for this little gem was Saul Bass, who, as I understand it, had made his mark doing title sequences for larger films. The movie is quite audacious; it examines the question of human creativity and does so in a series of short, quirky, imaginative sequences that comment on human nature, history, modern life, and what drives people to do creative things. The opening sequence is a wonderful five-minute encapsulation of western history that also conveys the flavor of the rest of the film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=penl-HYfMCg
Those halcyon days of educational experimentation produced some dismal failures (New Math, for instance) and some outstanding successes. This film was one of them. I understand that an outfit named Pyramid Media has released Why Man Creates on DVD, which is good, but they are charging $125 for it, which is moronic.
Hopefully the price will come down to what ordinary people are likely to pay for a 29 minute film, albeit one that is worth watching and thinking about. You don’t often see such a big subject handled so concisely and adroitly. And creativity is, after all, one of the true cornerstones of the life of the mind.
Is the VHS available anywhere? How about the 16mm film?
I would love a copy
As a teenager of the Sixties, I also was moved and inspired by “WhyMan Creates.” Over the years, I must have seen the film 30 or 40 times at least. There is no doubt that I have been influenced by it, to the extent that my professional life history has a great deal common with many parts of it — life imitating art? — such as the emphasis on passionate research that may or may not pay off (the scenes with the scientists, who chose good questions and problems) and the unabashed celebration of exhuberance (the parable of the ping pong ball) ….