John Grierson

  • Portraits (6)

  • Stills (1)

Highlighted works

This story of a commercial trawler off the west coast of Scotland is a crucial film in the development of the British documentary.

A small dragnet fishing vessel on the Viking Bank in the North Sea is the subject of this demonstration of the craft of documentary.

This short but potent film is an official classic of the British documentary movement, and an ‘oratorio of coal mining’.

An important film about conditions in schools – made by Basil Wright, a major figure in Britain’s 1930s documentary movement.

Filmography

1929
  • Drifters Directed by
    Edited by
  • TURKSIB English Version Recut and Retitled by
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1948
1951
1952
1953
1954
1959
1960
1961
1962
1965
1968
1970
1973
1980
1991

Related articles

As this issue was going to press, news came of the death at the age of 73 of John Grierson, ‘the father of British documentary’. In recent years, because of serious illness, he had been subjecting himself to a very austere regime in order simply to stay alive. But he was still very active, and still pioneering.

John Grierson on the dissolution of the Crown Film Unit. From Sight & Sound magazine, April-June 1952.

What is wrong and why, by John Grierson. From Sight & Sound magazine, Summer 1948.

John Grierson

From Sight & Sound magazine, October 1951.

John Grierson on the documentary movement. From Sight & Sound magazine, Jan-Mar 1955.

In the late 1920s, a group of highly talented, like-minded filmmakers, under the guidance of Scottish-born producer John Grierson, set out to advance factual filmmaking as an art form – what Grierson termed ‘the creative treatment of actuality’.

From Sight & Sound magazine, Summer 1972.