ABSTRACT
The Central Film Library of Vocational Education constitutes one of the first attempts to rationally organize industrial film in France. Affiliated with the Office of Technical Education of the Ministry of Public Instruction, it was created in 1925 within the framework of wider reforms encouraging the use of visual images in teaching. The institution’s principal objective was to direct individuals toward occupations or activities consistent with the modernization of the country. To this end, it commissioned films from Jean Benoit-Lévy, a director renowned as a specialist in educational cinemama. The catalogue, published in 1934, almost ten years after the institution’s creation, shows that despite its intentions, its means remained meager. By studying the process that led to the emergence and then the disaffection of a public policy in favor of industrial film, we can examine the ideological foundations of the cinemamatic representation of work in France between the wars.
