John Grierson Movies

Animated shapes dance to Cuban music. This was one of the first animations to be painted directly onto the film.

Documentary about shipbuilding on the Clyde. In 1960, Glasgow and other towns and ports on the River Clyde, on the west coast of Scotland, were still...

This documentary short examines the special train on which mail is sorted, dropped and collected on the run, and delivered in Scotland on the...

1935 documentary about the hard working life of Welsh coal miners.

The Brave Don't Cry aspires to the "feel" of a documentary, right down to the deliberate absence of background music. A mine in Scotland falls victim...

Seeking her long lost uncle, Ada Shore arrives at Skerryvore University to find him working under another name as the Gate Keeper. Ada is mistaken by...

Ambitious documentary chronicling the cultural life and religious customs of the Sinhalese and the effects of advanced industrialism on such customs.

Documentary following an Edinburgh fishing trawler, the "Isabella Grieg".

Part of BFI collection "Police and Thieves."

In this parody of Sherlock Holmes, the Great Detective goes to an opium den of inequity in the dangerous London district of London and challenges...

Humphrey Jennings' first film as a director, a brief overview of the British postal service.

An impressionistic portrait of the BBC.

The life and work of the documentary pioneer.

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

A film made by the British General Post Office (GPO) in 1933, promoting the automation of telephone exchanges.

Grierson set out to make "propaganda," and this film--with it's voice-over proclaiming the great value of the British industrial worker, without a...

Story of salmon fishers and the methods they use; captures the migration of salmon up a Highland river for spawning.

A boy pursues his ambition to be a jockey

Filmed in Uganda, Man of Africa was assembled by legendary documentary producer John Grierson. The film depicts the mass migration of the Bakija and...

Short documentary showing the workings of a large London sorting office.