John Grierson

John Grierson (April 26, 1898 – February 19, 1972) was one of the first and most influential documentary filmmakers in the history of cinema.^{[citation required]}

Biography

Born in Deanston, Scotland, Grierson went to the University of Glasgow where he studied communications before deciding on film. His first film titled Drifters (1929), about herring fishermen in England. After the release of Drifters with great success made with funds granted by the Empire Marketing Board, which would ask him to continue with his task in addition to becoming the director of the Unit of Films of the same (EMB Film Unit for its acronym in English).

Being a creative person, extremely organized and disciplined, he was in charge of recruiting an army of prospects to promote the new task of the Films Unit, people with little or no experience; people who over time became great directors of the documentary genre and who with their films helped promote a new image of the working class and the importance of their work in the industrial development of Great Britain.

Grierson continued to head the Film Unit for several years where he became known as the "godfather of documentary". In 1933 the Empire Marketing Board disappeared and the Film Unit became part of the general post office taking the name of the General Post Office Film Unit (GPO Film Unit), of the which Grierson continued to be its director until 1938 when he was invited to Canada.

Invited by the Canadian government to study film production in that country, he proposed to the government the creation of a national organization to coordinate film production. The following year, 1939, Canada created the national film commission, which would later become the National Film Board of Canada, of which Grierson would be its first commissioner. When Canada entered World War II in the same year, the NFB focused on the production of propaganda films, many of which were directed by Grierson himself.

After the War, his production focused on the lives of Canadians. The National Film Board of Canada is an institution recognized worldwide for the production of high-quality films, many of which have won Academy Awards.

In 1957 Grierson received a special award at the Canadian Film Awards ceremony.

Filmography as a director

• Drifters (1929); (Fishermen to the Deriva), shown for the first time during the premiere Potemkin battleship (by Serguéi Eisenstein in the version adapted by Grierson in the United States).
• Night Mail (1936);Night Mail), one of the first sound documentaries with narration written by W.H. Auden and music composed by Benjamin Britten.
• Industrial Britain (Industrial England)

Filmography as a producer

• Man of Africa (The Man of Africa)
• The Oracle (documentary) (The Oracle)
• Miss Robin Hood (Miss Robin Hood)
• You're Only Young Twice (It's just Young Two Veces.)
• The Brave Don't Cry (The Valientes don't cry)
• Brandy for the Parson (Brandy for the Parsons)
• The Obedient Flame (The Obedient Flame)
• Coal Face (Cara de Carbón)
• Granton Trawler (The Pesquero Granton)
• Pett and Pott: A Fary Story of the Suburbs (Pett and Pott: A History of the Suburbs)
• Song of Ceylon (The Song of the Ceylon)
• Housing Problems (Housing problems)

Literature

• Erik Barnow: Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, Oxford University Press 1993, ISBN 0-19-507898-5
• Kevin Macdonald, Mark Cousins: Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of the Documentary, faber and faber 1996, ISBN 0-571-17723-9
• Jack C. Ellis, John Grierson: Life, Contributions, Influence, Southern Illinois University Press 2000, ISBN 0-8093-2242-0
• Joyce Nelson, The Colonized Eye: Rethinking the Grierson Legend, Between the Lines, Toronto 1988, ISBN 0-919946-91-7