John Grierson

Born on April 26, 1898, Kilmadock, Stirlingshire, Scotland — died February 19, 1972, Bath, Somerset,
England

Founder of the British documentary-film movement and its leader for almost 40 years. He was one of the
first to see the potential of motion pictures to shape people’s attitudes toward life and to urge the use of
films for educational purposes.
Grierson was educated at the University of Glasgow and the University of Chicago. He returned
to England in 1928, and the next year the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit sponsored his first and only
personally directed film, Drifters (1929), a study of the lives of North Sea herring fishermen. This film
initiated the documentary movement in Britain. He then solicited financial support from business and
industry and enlisted the participation of artists interested in realistic filmmaking.
Grierson assisted in the formation of the National Film Board of Canada (1939), and during World War
II he supervised information films for the Canadian government. Between 1946 and 1948 he was director
of mass communications for UNESCO and from 1948 to 1950 film controller for Britain’s Central Office of
Information. Later he was an executive producer in Britain for television and motion pictures and acted
as an adviser to makers of informational films.

DETAILED LIFE STORY:

His ancestors were lighthouse keepers and his father was a school teacher. He served as an ordinary
seaman in WWI and completed a brilliant academic career after the war, graduating with distinction in
moral philosophy.
On a Rockefeller scholarship to the University of Chicago, Grierson began his lifelong study of the
influence of media on public opinion. In Hollywood to study film, he befriended the American filmmaker
Robert Flaherty, whose haunting film Nanook of the North celebrated the daily survival of an Inuit hunter.
In a 1926 review of one of Flaherty's films, he coined the term "documentary" to describe the
dramatization of the everyday life of ordinary people.
Grierson returned to England in 1927, intrigued with the idea of applying Flaherty's technique to the
common people of Scotland. In his first film, Drifters (1929), the silent depiction of the harsh life of
herring fishermen in the North Sea revolutionized the portrayal of working people in the cinema.
Grierson decided to devote his energies to the building of a movement dedicated to the documentary
aesthetic and directed only one more film.
In 1938 the Canadian government invited Grierson to come to Canada to counsel on the use of film.
Grierson prepared a report and on his recommendation King created the National Film Board (NFB) in
May 1939 and appointed Grierson its first commissioner in October 1939.
With the outbreak of war, Grierson would use film to instill confidence and pride in Canadians. He was at
the same time general manager of Canada's Wartime Information Board and thus had extraordinary
control over how Canadians perceived the war. He imported talented filmmakers such as Norman
McLaren. In film series such as Canada Carries On and The World in Action, he reached an audience of
millions in Canadian and American cinemas. By 1945 the NFB had grown into one of the world's largest
film studios and was a model for similar institutions around the world.
Grierson's emphasis on realism had a profound long-term influence on Canadian film. "Art is not a
mirror," he said, "but a hammer. It is a weapon in our hands to see and say what is good and right and
beautiful." Nevertheless, Grierson did not believe that documentary film is a mere public report of the
activities of daily life but a visual art that can convey a sense of beauty about the ordinary world.
As the war came to a close, Grierson grew weary of Canadian bureaucrats and resigned. He moved to
UNESCO in Paris, where rising directors such as Rossellini paid him homage. He was soon almost
forgotten in Canada. He returned to his native Scotland in the mid-1950s, where he hosted a public affairs
program, This Wonderful World, for 10 years.
Grierson was nearly broke when McGill University invited him to lecture in 1968. He began as a curiosity
but soon was attracting up to 800 students to his lectures. Indira Gandhi called him to India to find ways
to spread the principles of birth control to the villages. Sick with cancer, he returned home to England,
where he died at Bath.
Grierson was a firebrand whose single-minded devotion to the principle that "all things are beautiful, as
long as you have them in the right order" had a profound influence on the history of film, and on the
cultural life of Canada in particular.

Robert Flaherty
Robert Flaherty, in full Robert Joseph Flaherty, (born February 16, 1884, Iron Mountain, Michigan, US —
died July 23, 1951, Dummerston, Vermont), American explorer and filmmaker.

When he was a boy, Flaherty’s family moved to Canada, and as he grew up he explored and photographed
vast regions of the country’s northern territory. His first film, Nanook of the North (1922), a dramatic
interpretation of the Eskimo way of life, was based on 16 months of living with them and filming their
lives. His film was an international success, and its subjective presentation of reality set a model of
excellence for nonfiction filmmaking, foreshadowing the documentary movement of the 1930s. John
Grierson, the founder of the movement, first used the term documentary in a reference to Flaherty’s
film, Moana (1926), set in the South Seas, a record of a people untouched by the corruption of civilization.
In the 1930s and ’40s Flaherty’s most famous films were Tabu (1931), codirected with the German
director F W Murnau, Industrial Britain (1932), made with John Grierson, Man of Aran (1934), The
Land (1942), and Louisiana Story (1948).
Widely regarded as the inventor of documentary cinema, Robert Flaherty approached filmmaking with
an ethnographer's eye. Generating ideas 'in the field', he would shoot a vast footage - in his own words,
photographing what the camera wanted him to photograph - and distil ideas and material from
this. Flaherty is credited with eight films, all distinguished by an instinct for finding lyrical images. He
made three of them during his eight-year stay in Britain during the 1930s.

LIFE IN DETAIL:
The eldest of seven children, Robert Joseph Flaherty was born in Iron Mountain, Michigan on 16 February
1884. Having received little formal schooling, he briefly attended Upper Canada College, Toronto and the
Michigan School of Mines (where he met his wife and collaborator, Frances Hubbard). He spent the years
between 1910 and 1920 prospecting for iron ore in north Canada, where he gathered material for his
first film, Nanook of the North (1922).
In 1931, Flaherty came to Britain at John Grierson's behest to make a documentary for the Empire
Marketing Board: this was to be a study of craftsmanship in Britain's major industries. After some weeks
travelling around the country and shooting a great deal of 'test' footage, the EMB's limited film stock and
funds ran out and Flaherty was taken off the film, which was completed by EMB personnel. A sound
version of Industrial Britain, incorporating some of Flaherty's footage, was released in 1933 for
distribution to commercial cinemas.
For his next assignment, Man of Aran (1934), Flaherty and his crew spent over a year on the island of
Aran, off Ireland's Galway coast, shooting the film and absorbing Irish life. Again, the production, financed
by Gaumont-British, overran and the shoot was closed down: this time, however, Flaherty took part in
editing the film which, despite charges of inauthenticity (the islanders re-enacted long-abandoned fishing
practices for the camera), was enthusiastically received and garnered many awards, including Best Film
of 1934 at the Venice Film Festival.
In 1935, Flaherty was commissioned by Alexander Korda to film Elephant Boy in India. This was a big-
budget production by comparison with Flaherty's earlier work, and he was unable to complete it: after
two years of shooting, the film was finished at Denham Studios by Korda's brother Zoltan. A "wretched
piece of cinema by all standards," was Paul Rotha's verdict, "but it does contain some fine examples
of Flaherty's work."
When Flaherty returned to London, no further projects were forthcoming, and in 1939 he
and Frances returned to the USA, where he spent the remainder of his life, completing two more
films. Robert Flaherty died in Dummerston, Vermont on 23 July 1951, of cerebral thrombosis. His work
continues to be commemorated at the annual Flaherty Seminar, inaugurated by his widow in 1954.
Although his best work was done outside Britain, the single-minded, ungovernable Flaherty's sojourn
here delivered a stimulating culture shock to the relatively staid men dominating the British film scene.
More significantly, the scenes Flaherty shot for his British-made films remain among the most beautiful in
the history of documentary cinema.

GRIERSON AND FLAHERTY COMPARITIVE STUDY

Flaherty and Grierson are both very credible filmmakers from early documentary film history. Though
Flaherty is known as the first “father of documentary,” both artists are seen as important pioneers or
“fathers” of the industry.
While Grierson admired Flaherty as the father of documentary, he often took a different approach to the
industry. John Grierson’s determination was to “bring the citizen’s eye in from the ends of the earth to the
story, his own story, of what was happening under his nose…the drama of the door-step”. Grierson’s
mission focused on dramatizing issues and exploiting social issues in a meaningful way. One of Grierson’s
favorite topics was the situation as a mandate to explore the entire role of communication in a modern
society. Robert Flaherty was more involved in capturing the intimacy, communication between cultures,
and way of life in documentary, making the film more light-hearted for the audience. He often uses
reenactment and staged scenes, which some people argue about truth in using these techniques.
Flaherty is known for feature-length, close up portrait of a group of people, remotely located but familiar
in their humanity. Grierson criticizes Flaherty’s approach calling it remote and primitive. For example,
when Flaherty filmed Nanook in 1922, with no voiceover or commentary, the film was produced for a
Hollywood audience. It was playful and enjoyable to watch because it outlined Inuit culture as American’s
knew it. Flaherty writes about the film Nanook: “What I want to show is the former majesty and character
of these people, while it was still possible, before the white man has destroyed not only their character,
but the people as well”. Part of the satisfaction when watching the Nanook film lies in the fact the
audience has been permitted to be an explorer and discoverer, like Flaherty himself. Flaherty includes the
audience.
Grierson would have taken a different approach, I suspect, by outlining the social issue of how the white
man changed the culture for the Inuit’s or how they had a lack of food and supplies. This approach would
have given the film a different feel, making the documentary more political to a modern issue. Grierson
shows or teaches the audience about a social issue, where the film would have been more persuasive
than intimate.
Grierson’s films appeal to a smaller audience, more “private groups.” For example, The Battleship
Potemkin, forbidden in theaters by British censorship decision, was more issue-oriented and considered
unfit for the public eye. On the other hand, Drifters filmed by Grierson was less obtrusive, more Flaherty
style. Drifters brought to life the daily routine of workers and there was nothing doctrinally radical about
it (89). The success of Drifters is what brought Grierson, a deviation from Flaherty, to find his new career.
Grierson in the British filmmaking industry, focuses on personal matters for the audience. He tells his film
crew that they are, “Propagandists first, filmmakers second”. Some major characteristics that are noticed
in Grierson filmmaking is he dealt with impersonal social process; usually shorter film with the use of
commentary or voice over that articulated a point of view. Flaherty, for example in filming Man of Aran, is
known for a feature-length, close up portrait of a group of people, remotely located but familiar in their
humanity.
Grierson critiques Flaherty’s filming technique in Man of Aran arguing that he ignored the social issue
going on at the time, stating: “Flaherty ignored, amid a world economic crisis, the social context in which
Aran islanders carried struggles”. Grierson would have fixated on a more modern approach and outlined
the important issues going on in Aran at the time rather than focusing on an earlier period, which is what
Flaherty did. Grierson used film to build national morale in Britain to deal with the problems during the
Great Depression.
John Grierson has changed or shaped the documentary genre by taking a more a realistic approach,
reporting social issues rather than documentary for pleasure. Grierson makes his films more political
reasons rather than for a Hollywood audience, which was more Flaherty’s style. Documentaries today are
more informative, outlining a social issue rather than capturing the essence, beauty and intimacy of life,
like Flaherty did. Both filmmakers have contributed a great deal and devoted a perfect balance and
example for documentary film today. Filmmakers today can contribute aspects of both Grierson and
Flaherty’s techniques to teach the audience about a social issue while also capturing a personal account,
and intimate culture of the scene. This was portrayed well in modern day documentary The Act of Killing.
The film both presented a social issue to the audience where scenes were very intense, but also showed
the happiness of the culture, like when the families are all joking around together. Grierson and Flaherty
have contributed an important balance of aspects to filmmaking in which modern day artists still use
today.