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Why were the first documentary films made?
When did film become a 'documentary'?
Where did the word 'documentary' come from?
When did John Grierson first use the term documentary?
The word "documentary" was coined by Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson in his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926, written by "The Moviegoer" (a pen name for Grierson).
Sep 21, 2024 · John Grierson, a Scottish educator who had studied mass communication in the United States, adapted the term in the mid-1920s from the French word documentaire. The documentary-style film, though, had been popular from the earliest days of filmmaking.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
When John Grierson (1946) applied the word “documentary” to Robert Flaherty’s film of South Sea islanders, Moana, in 1926, he used it as an adjective, speaking of the film’s “documentary value” as “a visual account of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth and his family.”
Many scholars believe film pioneer John Grierson "coined the term" documentary when he first used it in a film review for the New York Sun in 1926. This paper provides documentary evidence that another film pioneer - namely, Charles Urban - used the word in film terms and in English in 1907, nearly 20 years before Grierson. See Full PDF.
- Mark Terry, PhD
The History of Documentary Film Before 1900. When analyzing the history of documentary film, one could argue that the first films ever made were documentary films because they documented short snippets of real “actual” events, such as a boat pulling up to the dock or workers leaving a factory.
The very first films (pre-1900’s) were called "actuality films" because they captured short snippets of real "actual" events, such as a boat pulling up to the dock or workers leaving a factory. So in essence, the first movies ever made were documentaries, also called newsreels.
The earliest known use of the word documentary is in the 1820s. OED's earliest evidence for documentary is from 1827, in the writing of Jeremy Bentham, philosopher, jurist, and reformer.
