About the site

DFG Docs is a reference on documentary film — its makers, its works and its movements, from 1922 to now.

The site is organised chronologically. Seven sections run from the silent expedition films through Grierson's state film units, Free Cinema, Direct Cinema and the essay film, to the last decade's arguments about form and platform. A seventh, Makers, follows individual filmmakers across the century rather than inside one movement. Every piece is reachable from a section page or from the archive.

Each piece is built around named works, named people and dated events: a film, a year, a festival, a court ruling, a piece of equipment. Where a figure will go stale it carries its date inside the sentence. Where two accounts of the same event differ, both are set out.

The institutions the site keeps returning to

How to read the sections

The movement names are conveniences, not fences. Wiseman is filed under Direct Cinema and belongs equally in Makers; Varda's Gleaners sits in Essay Film and could as easily sit in the digital-camera history. Where a piece could go two ways it is filed where its argument is strongest and cross-linked from the other.