1. The British Documentary movement began in the 1920s-1930s led by John Grierson who used documentary films to promote British trade but also showcased working class life. 2. The Free Cinema movement of the 1950s-1960s produced low-budget documentaries that focused on realistic depictions of ordinary people's lives, moving away from propaganda and upper-class focus. 3. Both movements aimed to use film to address social issues and represent everyday experiences, though Grierson and his units also had government promotional objectives at times. They helped shift British films towards kitchen sink realism.

1. Documentary
The history of British Documentary (part 1):
From IMPERIAL PROPAGANDA to KITCHEN SINK REALISM

2. Last week
What were you learning about?
● The reasons why we make documentaries
● Film-makers relationships with ‘the truth’

3. Today you will learn about the history of British
documentary
1. John Grierson & The Documentary Film
Movement (1920’s - 1930’s)
2. Free Cinema (1950’s - 1960’s)
3. Independent collectives

4. John Grierson & “The Documentary Film Movement”
The Documentary Film Movement was formed
in the 1930's in the UK, by John Grierson, a
government employee with the UK
government’s EMB (Empire Marketing Board), a
government organisation responsible for
promoting British trade throughout the world.
Grierson’s job was to commission films which
would help promote trade & unity throughout
the empire. He used this opportunity to make
the first modern documentaries.

5. Grierson: social activist, or propagandist?
Grierson believed passionately that cinema
could solve social wrongs, unite the nation
and improve the morale of ordinary people
during times of hardship, but he was also
paid to promote the governments
‘message’.
How does that affect his relationship with
the objective truth?

6. Drifters (dir: John Grierson)
He believed cinema should show the
gritty reality of working class life in
Britain, rather than exciting ‘exotic’
faraway places.
His films were a mix of working-class
life and government propaganda.
"I look on cinema as a
pulpit, and use it as a
propagandist."

7. The Documentary Film Movement: EMB & beyond
Grierson now moved away from the role of director, and instead began commissioning
other film-makers to make documentaries for the EMB under the name ‘The
Documentary Film Movement’.
In 1934 Grierson moved from the EMB to a similar role in the Post Office, and formed
the GPO Unit (the general post office unit), a film unit tasked with making
documentaries for the post office, using many of the film-makers from The
Documentary Film Movement.
When World War 2 started, the GPO became ‘The Crown Film Unit’, and were tasked
with making propaganda and documentary films for the British Government.

8. Grierson,The GPO & the Crown Film Unit
Grierson left the GPO in the mid thirties
and began producing documentaries
independently. Grierson had grown to
advocate a more journalistic approach to
documentary film-making, whereas the
Crown Film Unit (& GPO) advocated the
use of dramatised docudramas (war
propaganda) such as ‘Target for Tonight’.
Grierson continued to be influential in
documentaries, but The Documentary Film
Movement was over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXsK26HJnoo

9. Spare Time (dir: Humphrey Jennings) 1939
Humprhey Jennings 1939 documentary
Spare Time was influential to a later film-
movement called ‘Free Cinema’.
The documentary was an observational
documentary
https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-spare-time-1939-online

10. FREE CINEMA
Over 3 years the National Film Theatre held 6
different screenings under the banner ‘Free Cinema’,
championed by film-maker Lindsay Anderson.
Each screening showed several short documentaries
back to back.
The Free Cinema programme of films were united in
their low-budget production style (shot on cheap black
& white 16mm film) and their realistic depictions of
working-class lives.

11. Free Cinema
The first Free Cinema programme:
1. O DREAMLAND (Dir. L Anderson) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO9aXrZmO6s
2. MOMMA DON’T ALLOW (Dirs. Richardson & Reisz)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je24WUx7EcE
3. TOGETHER (Dir. L Mazetti) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lQGU7WZ4e8

12. Mazzetti on Free Cinema
“These films were not made together; nor with the
idea of showing them together. But when they came
together, we felt they had an attitude in common.
Implicit in this attitude is a belief in freedom, in the
importance of people and the significance of the
everyday.”

13. “Free” cinema
Free Cinema film-makers were free from:
● the constraints of the studio system as they were micro-budget, and either self
funded, or funded by the ‘BFI Experimental Film Fund’, or the Ford Motor
Company.
● the need to spread propaganda, as the film-makers weren’t working for the British
Goverment.
● free to tell the real lives of everyday British people, showing the ordinary working
class lives of their subjects in sharp contrast to the romanticised, upper class
cinema of 1950s Britain.

14. FREE CINEMA & Kitchen sink realism
The Free Cinema movement
helped to usher in a period of
kitchen sink realism in British
films.
These films focused on everyday
social realism, showing life as it
really was for the millions of
working class people in Britain.

15. Task 1: RESEARCH
Working alone, research The Documentary Film Movement & Free Cinema. Look at
the key directors involved and their ethos when producing their films. What did they
believe in? What were their aims?

16. Sources & research:
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/446186/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci4od6ja2JE
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/444789/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO9aXrZmO6s
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/592881/index.html