Movies: John Grierson

Animated shapes dance to Cuban music. This was one of the first animations to be painted directly onto the film....

This documentary short examines the special train on which mail is sorted, dropped and collected on the run, and delivered in Scotland on the overnight run from Euston, London to Glasgow....

Part of BFI collection "Police and Thieves."...

1935 documentary about the hard working life of Welsh coal miners....

Ambitious documentary chronicling the cultural life and religious customs of the Sinhalese and the effects of advanced industrialism on such customs....

The Brave Don't Cry aspires to the "feel" of a documentary, right down to the deliberate absence of background music. A mine in Scotland falls victim to a cave-in, trapping some one hundred workers. Rescue parties are formed as the tremulous families...

Documentary following an Edinburgh fishing trawler, the "Isabella Grieg"....

Documentary about shipbuilding on the Clyde. In 1960, Glasgow and other towns and ports on the River Clyde, on the west coast of Scotland, were still one of the world's great centres of shipbuilding. The film gives an idea of the business of building...

A silent film by John Grierson. It tells the story of Britain's North Sea herring fishery....

A boy pursues his ambition to be a jockey...

Humphrey Jennings' first film as a director, a brief overview of the British postal service....

Drama-documentary, reconstructing a real incident in which a trawler got into difficulties in a North Sea storm. Released 7th March 1938....

The life and work of the documentary pioneer....

When Canada entered World War II, the National Film Board suddenly had an urgent new mission—and hundreds of women stepped forward, helping to create Canadian cinema as we now know it....

An impressionistic portrait of the BBC....

Short documentary about a trawler fishing for hake....

Grierson set out to make "propaganda," and this film--with it's voice-over proclaiming the great value of the British industrial worker, without a hint of ambiguity or doubt--fits that category well. The authoritatarian narrator feels out-of-date and...

An overview of the shepherd's life during the lambing season....

Filmed in Uganda, Man of Africa was assembled by legendary documentary producer John Grierson. The film depicts the mass migration of the Bakija and Batwa tribes to a new territory after the natural resources of their native soil has been depleted. T...

A Cockney lad trains to be a messenger boy....