Documentary film — the makers, the works and the movements, from 1922 to now.

Grierson

The GPO Film Unit, the Crown Film Unit, Night Mail, Housing Problems — how a Scottish civil servant invented the British documentary tradition.

Two men stand near an aircraft, one in a hat and suit, the other bespectacled
The Phrase That Defined a FormPhoto: John Grierson · Wikimedia Commons

The creative treatment of actuality.

John Grierson, on what documentary was permitted to do

Everything in Grierson

The whole archive