Documentary Movies

This documentary, made up of 3 episodes, is based on three songs sung by anonymous people in Soviet Russia about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

A documentary on the life of the people of the Aran Islands, who were believed to contain the essence of the ancient Irish life, represented by a pure uncorrupted peasant…

The film is a documentary portraying a struggle as man tries to subdue nature. To prevent flooding and for purposes of land reclamation, the people of the Netherlands struggle and…

One of the short little films featuring Don Aspiazu of his own orchestra, a good example of the style of Cubano jazz in the 1920’s and 1930’s, combined with some…

The film explores the story of the Bounty and is based on the 1932 novel Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall.

This is a documentary of Captain R.F. Scott’s second Antarctic expedition, begun in 1910. The British, under Scott, attempted to reach the South Pole before Roald Amundsen’s Norwegians. Scott’s writings…

Arrival in the Bronx is shown with a view from an elevated train as it enters the city. Then follows a montage of sights from the Bronx. Many typical neighborhood…

Short silent documentary from 1931 about those working on the River Douro in Oporto.

An industrial film which shows the operations inside the Philips Radio plant: In a mêlée of activity, glassblowers make delicate glass bulbs. Machinery assists the bulb manufacture. A virtuoso glassblower…

This is a non-narrative film, comprised of shots that “portray a certain young man in the terms of the things that he likes”, such as the flow of the tide…

A lyrical documentary on the lives of Coal miners in the Donbass who are struggling to meet their production quotas under the Five Year Plan.

Close up we see pistons move up and down or side to side. Pendulums sway, the small parts of machinery move. Gears drive larger wheels. Gears within gears spin. Shafts…

A lyrical portrait of Amsterdam and its changing appearance during a rain-shower.

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,…

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

Bold and exhilarating documentary account of the building of the Turkestan-Siberian railway, presented as a heroic triumph of Soviet progress over natural adversity.

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

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…

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…

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 film is dedicated to the achievements of the Ukrainian SSR for the eleventh anniversary of the October Revolution.

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…

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…

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.”

A documentary on the 1924 Olympic Game in Paris.

A documentary covering the Olympic Games at Chamonix in 1924.

A documentary on the Olympic games of ancient Greece, made during the 1924 games.

This documentary promoting the joys of life in a Soviet village centers on the activities of the Young Pioneers. These children are constantly busy, pasting propaganda posters on walls, distributing…

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…

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.

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen’s legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle…

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…

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…

A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.

Actuality scenes of Berlin circa 1910.

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…

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…