Documentary Movies
Drăguș viața unui sat românesc (1929)
One of the first sociological and ethnographic documentary films worldwide, made by the team of sociologists and students of Professor Dimitrie Gusti (1880-1955) in the village of Drăguş, Făgăraş County,…
Drifters (1929)
A silent film by John Grierson. It tells the story of Britain’s North Sea herring fishery.
Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
Skyscraper Symphony (1929)
A montage of the skyscrapers of Manhattan opens with a succession of stationary views of the upper portions of numerous buildings. This is followed by a wide variety of fluid…
Gow the Head Hunter (1928)
Captain Edward A. Salisbury was a noted millionaire explorer and writer, whose exploration stories of the islands of the South Seas Pacific appeared often in “The National Geographic,” and other…
Verdun: Visions of History (1928)
A dramatized re-enactment and documentary of the Battle of Verdun as seen by both French and German soldiers, shot on site of the actual battle.
The Eleventh Year (1928)
The film is dedicated to the achievements of the Ukrainian SSR for the eleventh anniversary of the October Revolution.
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)
A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany…
Stride Soviet! (1926)
Commissioned by the Moscow Soviet as a documentary and information film for the citizens of Moscow prior to municipal elections, film is a tableau of Soviet life and achievements in…
Moana (1926)
Robert J. Flaherty’s South Seas follow-up to Nanook of the North is a Gauguin idyll moved by “pride of beauty… pride of strength.”
The Olympic Games in Paris 1924 (1925)
A documentary on the 1924 Olympic Game in Paris.
The 1924 Chamonix Olympic Games (1924)
A documentary covering the Olympic Games at Chamonix in 1924.
The Olympic Games as They Were Practiced in Ancient Greece (1924)
A documentary on the Olympic games of ancient Greece, made during the 1924 games.
Ballet Mécanique (1924)
A pulsing, kaleidoscope of images set to an energetic soundtrack. This is a world in motion, dominated by mechanical and repetitive images, with a few moments of solitude in a…
The Great White Silence (1924)
Herbert Ponting travelled to Antarctica as part of Captain Scott’s ill-fated South pole expedition and shot the footage that makes up this extraordinary documentary.
Nanook of the North (1922)
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada’s northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful…
Manhatta (1921)
Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall St. or stroll more languorously through a…
Anniversary of the Revolution (1918)
A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.
A Trip through Berlin (1910)
Actuality scenes of Berlin circa 1910.
Scene in Chinatown (1900)
his film was shot in an alley of San Francisco’s Chinatown on Saturday, September 15, 1900, at midday. The topography of the site (sloping down to the far street), the…
Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894)
A man (Thomas Edison’s assistant) takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. This is one of the earliest Thomas Edison films and was the second motion picture to be copyrighted…