John Grierson Movies

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...

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

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

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...

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

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

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

An impressionistic portrait of the BBC.

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

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...

A record of an educational experiment in the small town of Chesterfield in Derbyshire.

Part of BFI collection "Police and Thieves."

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...

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

The life and work of the documentary pioneer.

A boy pursues his ambition to be a jockey

A short GPO documentary showing how undersea telephone cables are repaired.

“Catching up with gossip, inspecting new ducklings, clambering over gates, walking across meadows - the life of a postman appears idyllic, but...

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...

A look at the work of Glasgow's Medical Officer of Health.