Documentary? No more?

Just a mention here about a strand of filmmaking - documentary.
It’s the country cousin that is never invited to the film family dinner.
Years back documentary was usurped by TV news & then openly beaten about the face and neck by reality TV. It now seems it is largely driven by social issue agenda’s.

Curiosity films, art & real natural history are just a few relegated to the back of the documentary bus.

What the heck is documentary anymore anyways? All I know is that it is pretty much dead from whence it came.

Film documentary was once a highly skilled form of filmcraft. Not so much anymore. Your Uncle Jerry probably has made many of them.

It’s time to rethink these names and what they mean? They are important to defining the work we all do.

Cinema Libre! What was “long form art documentary”.

Further to what documentary cinema was, and still can be -

The father of documentary film, John Grierson had this to say:

“But this much is certain:  in our realistic cinema, all roads lead by one hill or another to poetry. Poets we must all be – or stay forever journalists.”

– John Grierson

A little bit here about John Grierson. He coined the term ‘documentary’.

Grierson was the first commissioner of the National Film Board of Canada.

Grierson was a Scot who established documentary as a form of filmmaking. He began in the 1920’s at the Empire Marketing Board in England. Then at the British General Post Office, he pioneered documentary filmmaking with a group of selected individuals who became a film unit, Basil Wright, Henry Watt and Stuart Legg to name a few.

In 1938 during the second world war, Grierson was invited by the Canadian Government to set up a national documentary film unit for the purposes of creating propaganda films to rally and unite the spirit of Canadians. This unit became the National Film Board of Canada.

Now one needs to consider in 1938, just how young a country Canada was.

(and still is). Founded only in 1870, in 1938 Canada was only 68 years old.

(Almost old enough for a full pension!)

A great challenge for Canada is its immense size. Geographically, Canada is the second largest country on Earth. In the 1930’s it was acknowledged that this very young country needed a way to become familiar with itself. To form a national identity.


The film board set out to do this. It was a starting point. 

Canada still faces many ongoing political and geographical challenges.