A brief timeline into the history of documentaries and associated creators, how they came about and where they are now.

1. 1877: Eadweard Muybridge develops sequential photographs of horses in
motion. Muybridge subsequently invents the zoöpraxiscope in 1879, a
device for projecting and "animating" his photographic images.
1883: Etienne Jules Marey experiments with chronophotography, the
photography of people in movement.
1895: Auguste and Louis Lumière stage the world's first public film
screening on December 28, 1895 in the basement lounge of the Grand Cafe
on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris.
1928: Dziga Vertov films The Man With The Movie Camera (Chelovek s
kinoapparatom). The film uses experimental editing techniques and cinéma
tic innovations to portray a typical day in Moscow from dawn to dusk.
Vertov’s stated aim is to capture "life caught unawares." Rather than simply
recording reality, however, Vertov attempts to transform and enlighten it
through the power of the camera's "kino-glaz" (cinéma eye).
1928: John Grierson joins the British Empire Marketing Board (EMB), a
governmental agency, and organizes the E.M.B. Film Unit. In the EMB, and
later in his work with the film unit of the British General Post Office,
Grierson gathered around him a group of talented and energetic filmmakers,
including Edgar Anstey, Sir Arthur Elton, Stuart Legg, Basil Wright,
Humphrey Jennings, Harry Watt, and Alberto Cavalcanti.
1930-37: The Worker's Film and Photo League is formed in the US
(subsequently transformed into Nykino in 1934, and finally into Frontier
Films in 1937) with the purpose of making independent documentaries with
a politically and socially progressive viewpoint. Members include Paul
Strand, Ralph Steiner, Leo Hurwitz, Willard Van Dyke, and Joris Ivens.
1950-60’s: Using newly developed, lightweght, hand-held cameras with
synchronized sound, a new generation of young filmmakers in the US and
Europe attempts to redefine the nature of the documentary film. Termed
variously Direct Cinema (US), Cinéma Vérité (France), and Free Cinema
(Canada and England), the films created by these filmmakers strive for
immediacy, spontaneity, and authenticity—an attempt to bring the
filmmaker and the audience closer to the subject. These films are often
characterized by the use of real people in unrehearsed situations, as opposed
to actors with scripts. Voice-over narration is avoided, and directorial
intervention is kept to a minimum. Sets and props are never used and most
films are shot on location.

2. 1951: CBS Television inaugurates the first regular news magazine
series, See It Now, hosted by Edward R. Murrow. The program also
establishes a standard for investigative reporting by tackling large issues of
the day, from McCarthyism to racial integration. The series runs until 1957.
1953: National Educational Television (later the Public Broadcasting
Service [PBS]) is founded.
1955: Armstrong Circle Theatre is first broadcast on American television.
The program is generally considered the first continuing sixty-minute series
to utilize the form that would come to be known as "docudrama"—dramatic
recreations of real events.
1958: The National Film Board of Canada begins production of The
Candid Eye—thirteen half-hour films, many of which demonstrate the new
ideas of what will come to be called Cinéma Vérité, or Direct Cinéma .
1959: Filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, along with Richard Leacock, and
brothers Al and David Maysles, joins Drew Associates, a group of
filmmakers organized by Robert Drew and Time Inc. dedicated to furthering
the use of film in journalism. Drew Associates developed the first fully
portable 16mm synchronized camera and sound system.
1968: Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) established
1960’s and 1970’s: In the late 1960’s, many filmmakers turn away
from the coolly distanced approach of earlier cinéma vérité filmmakers and
embrace a more passionately partisan and openly polemic approach to
filmmaking. Civil rights, anti-war movements, and the women’s movement
provide the impetus for much of this cinéma tic activism. The socially and
politically charged atmosphere of the 1960’s and 1970’s and the rise of
political, social, and sexual activism also provide historically marginalized
communities—among them, women, people of color, gays and lesbians--
with unprecedented opportunities for presenting their views of themselves
and the world to larger and more receptive audiences. The 1960’s see the
development of a number of independent, radical film collectives—in 1968
in San Francisco, Boston, New York, and other cities--organized to
chronicle current political and social events and to produce films as a form
of political protest and resistance.
1970s: The late 60’s and 70’s and later decades see shifts in the narrative
approach of many documentaries.

3. 1991: On March 3rd amateur videographer George Holliday shoots a
twelve-minute videotape of Los Angeles police arresting and beating
Rodney King after a high-speed chase. The Holliday tape is shown so often
on CNN and other television channels that one CNN executive calls it
"wallpaper."
1999: The Blair Witch Project, a faux vérité documentary, grosses over
$100 million in the US alone
2001: An enormous rash of television programs utilizing some of the
techniques of cinema vérité hit the network and cable airwaves—so called
"reality TV." These include MTV’s Real World and The
Osbournes, Survivor, Big Brother, Amazing Race, The Fear Factor, The
Bachelor and The Bachelorette, Joe Millionaire, The Mole, and Chains of
Love.