Sponsored Films

Activity Group Therapy (1950)
Sponsor: Jewish Board of Guardians, with funding by Nathan Hofheimer Foundation Inc. Production Co.: Campus Film Productions. Transfer Note: Scanned from a 16mm print held by the Library of Congress. Running Time: 54 minutes.

Training film made for mental health and social workers. Activity Group Therapy explores the development of socially maladjusted boys, 10 and 11 years old, over 65 weeks of activity group therapy. Using concealed cameras and microphones, the film records how the subjects act out their disturbances and documents their interactions with a therapist and with other boys. A dense and absorbing record of children’s vernacular speech and body language, this unrehearsed film argues for encouraging troubled boys to form a club and work things out themselves.

Note: Developed at the sponsor’s New York City treatment facility.

Resources
Center for Mass Communication, 1954 Sales and Rental Catalog (New York: Center for Mass Communication, Columbia University Press, 1954), 2.