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Explore social realities and promote social change
- Grierson founded the Documentary Movement in Britain in the 1930s, which sought to use film to explore social realities and promote social change. He believed that documentaries should serve a public purpose by educating audiences about important societal issues, rather than merely entertaining.
library.fiveable.me/key-terms/critical-tv-studies/john-griersonJohn Grierson - Vocab, Definition, and Must Know Facts - Fiveable
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Film critic. Grierson's emerging and outspoken film philosophies caught the attention of New York film critics at the time. He was asked to write criticism for the New York Sun. At the Sun, Grierson wrote articles on film aesthetics and audience reception, and developed broad contacts in the film world.
John Grierson was the 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.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Early Influences
- Putting Ideas Into Practice
- Documentary’S Social Influence
Grierson was born in 1898 when going to the movies still meant going to a Kinetoscope parlour peeping into a flickering projection box; but screen projection technology, so important to Grierson’s social education enterprise, was just around the corner. Born into a large family that wasn’t afraid to argue politics over dinner, John Grierson was a l...
While in Hollywood, Grierson met and became friends with fellow documentary icon Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, 1922) who Grierson credits with laying the foundations of documentary film before the genre had a name. It was Flaherty’s 1926 docufiction film Moana about Samoan culture that prompted Grierson to coin the term. Although Flaherty a...
Dire economic and fragile social conditions in the 1930’s and the threat of war moved Grierson to steer British documentary away from poetic towards journalistic storytelling that called attention to ‘pressing problems facing the nation.’ Grierson persuaded the British Commercial Gas Association to sponsor a film about living conditions in the indu...
- Peter Biesterfeld
Dec 3, 2014 · 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.
Jul 5, 2024 · John Grierson, born in Deanston, Scotland, is widely regarded as the father of the British documentary -film movement. His early exposure to strong social and political ideas shaped his pioneering vision for using film as a tool for education and social change.
Sep 15, 2017 · ‘First principles’ proposed Flaherty as the documentary tradition’s first filmmaker and his Nanook of the North (1922) as its founding film.
Dr. John Grierson CBE (1898-1972) was born in Perthshire, Scotland, son of a local school headmaster. He studied philosophy at Glasgow University, but was drawn into film-making through post-graduate study in the US on the influence of mass media on public opinion.
