What was the first documentary film?
First Contact (1983 film)
"First Contact" is the first documentary in what later became known as "The Highland Trilogy". The other two films are "Joe Leahy's Neighbours" (1989) and "Black Harvest" (1992). These three films, between them, have won some thirty major awards, included each film winning both the Grand Prix at the Festival Cinéma du Réel in Paris and AFI Award for Best Documentary.
Charles Tait (film director)
The Tait brothers' earliest presentations centred on the Athenaeum Hall in Collins Street, Melbourne, with concerts often including popular short, film screenings. This interest led them to join with Millard Johnson and William Gibson in the production of "The Story of the Kelly Gang" which premièred on 26 December 1906 at the Athenaeum. The film is now recognized as the first feature-length narrative film.
Nicolas Noxon
In 1967 he was co-founder of the Documentary Department at MGM, the first such organization in a major movie studio. There he produced and supervised many natural history documentaries as well as films on such diverse subjects as archaeology, forest fires, the history of the movies and early child development.
Cinema of Japan
In 1898 some ghost films were made, the Shirō Asano shorts "Bake Jizo" (Jizo the Spook / 化け地蔵) and "Shinin no sosei" (Resurrection of a Corpse). The first documentary, the short "Geisha no teodori" (芸者の手踊り), was made in June 1899. Tsunekichi Shibata made a number of early films, including "Momijigari", an 1899 record of two famous actors performing a scene from a well-known kabuki play. Early films were influenced by traditional theater – for example, kabuki and bunraku.
Abingdon Film Unit
The AFU's first larger-scale documentary was a thirty-minute film about the experience of disabled people in Cambodia called 'Gravel and Stones', made by Edward Hofman and Ben Hollins (directors), Tom Wakeling (cinematography), Andrew Mcgrath (sound recordist) and Suon Rottana (research and translation). It premiered at the BFI Southbank in November 2007 ahead of outings the following year at Raindance and LIDF. The film examines the devastating effects of land mines on the people of Cambodia, and was made with support of an NGO called Landmine Disability Support or LMDS (http://www.lmdsupport.org.uk).
List of Dutch documentary films
The first known Dutch documentary was made in 1916 by Johann Vierboom. The film "Storm en noodweer in Nederland" shows the 1916 flood disaster at the coasts of the Zuiderzee. An other documentary film of this era is "Holland Neutraal: De leger- en vlootfilm" (1917) by Willy Mullens. One of the most famous Dutch documentary film directors is Joris Ivens. Ivens started making his own films in 1928. The first was an avant-garde look at a Rotterdam bridge, "The Bridge" ("De brug", 1928). His later films were more realistic, socially concerned and polemical.
"The Spanish Earth" (1937) is one of his most famous films. In order to make internationally oriented documentaries, Ivens travelled to countries such as the Soviet Union, Spain, China, Australia and the United States.
I clowns
It is a docufiction: part reality, part fantasy. The film has sometimes been referred to as the first mockumentary in film history, although 1964's "A Hard Day's Night" may have a superior claim to that distinction. Being documentary and fiction in one, "The Clowns" distinguishes itself by being a mockumentary with unique characteristics, not the least of which is reflecting Fellini's own increasing fascination with how documentary films reflect "reality". Fellini would further explore this semi-fictional documentary genre in 1972's "Fellini's Roma" and 1987's "Intervista", both of which contain unreliable depictions of Fellini himself making the film within the film narrative.
Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film
The Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film was introduced for the 11th Golden Globe Awards, followed by the 30th Golden Globe Awards before discontinuation after the 34th Golden Globe Awards. The award was first given to "A Queen is Crowned" (1953), which details the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. It was last given to "Altars of the World" (1976).
Feature film
Defined by length, the first dramatic feature film was the Australian 70-minute film "The Story of the Kelly Gang" (1906). Similarly, the first European feature was the 90-minute film "L'Enfant prodigue" (France, 1907), although that was an unmodified record of a stage play; Europe's first feature adapted directly for the screen, "Les Misérables", came from France in 1909. The first Russian feature was "Defence of Sevastopol" in 1911. Early Italian features were "The Inferno (L'Inferno)" (1911), "Quo Vadis?" (1913), "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1913), and "Cabiria" (1914). The first UK features were the documentary "With Our King and Queen Through India" (1912), filmed in Kinemacolor and "Oliver Twist" (1912). The first American features were adaptations of "Oliver Twist" (1912), "From the Manger to the Cross" (1912), "Cleopatra" (1912), and "Richard III" (1912). The latter starring actor Frederick Warde starred in some of these movie adaptations. The first Asian feature was Japan's "The Life Story of Tasuke Shiobara" (1912), the first Indian feature was "Raja Harishchandra" (1913), the first South American feature was Brazil's "O Crime dos Banhados" (1913), and the first African feature was South Africa's "Die Voortrekkers" (1916). 1913 also saw China's first feature film, Zhang Shichuan's "Nan Fu Nan Qi".
Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love
"Youssou N’dour: I Bring What I Love" was the first feature-length documentary film by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who also acted as producer on the film. A Groovy Griot Film In Association with 57th & Irving Productions, the film was executive produced by Edward Tyler Nahem, Jennifer Millstone, Patrick Morris, Jack Turner, Kathryn Tucker, and Miklos C.Vasarhelyi, and co-produced by Sarah Price, Gwyn Welles, Scott Duncan, and Hugo Berkeley. The film’s cinematographers are Nick Doob (From Mao to Mozart; an Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature), Jojo Pennebaker (The War Room), six-time Emmy winner Scott Duncan (Olympic Games, Survivor), and Hugo Berkeley. The film’s original score was composed by Emmy winner Martin Davich (Trinity) and six time Academy Award nominee James Newton Howard (Blood Diamond).
Roger Graef
In 1968 he made a film called "Why Save Florence?" (BBC/BR/NET), about the poor state of the city's defences against flooding. His 1970 film "In the Name of Allah: the life cycle of a Muslim community" (filmed in Fez, Morocco) for BBC/BR/NET was the first long documentary on Islam shown in the West. Working with his collaborator cameraman Charles Stewart, Graef made the first "fly-on-the wall" purely observational series "The Space between Words" in 1972 for the BBC and PBS, including "Politics", the first documentary filmed inside the US Senate, and "Diplomacy", the first unstaged film inside the United Nations.
Cinema of Croatia
The cinema of Croatia became an institution after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in 1941. The new Ustaše regime quickly realised the need for modern propaganda tools modeled on those of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. After serious lobbying of these two governments for technical advice and resources, the first propaganda films were made in late 1941. Croatian filmmakers like Branko Marjanović produced in 1943 the documentary "Straža na Drini" which later won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, attended by Axis power countries. After the collapse of NDH in 1945, Tito's victorious Communists also recognised the importance of the film industry and decided to build their own. Many technicians and co-workers of the Ustaše propaganda cinema industry during the war were in fact double agents working for the partisan side, with one main task: to keep the technical facilities untouched upon the collapse of NDH. Therefore, the new regime inherited the technical equipment, and more importantly trained personnel, including directors and top officials. The result of such a policy was the rapid development of the Croatian film industry, although initially under jurisdiction of the federal government in Belgrade.
Documentary film
Early film (pre-1900) was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. They were single-shot moments captured on film: a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. These short films were called "actuality" films; the term "documentary" was not coined until 1926. Many of the first films, such as those made by Auguste and Louis Lumière, were a minute or less in length, due to technological limitations.
The First Film
The First Film is a 2015 British documentary film about cinema pioneer Louis Le Prince, made by David Nicholas Wilkinson. It argues the case that Le Prince, rather than the Lumiere brothers, was the true inventor of moving pictures, making his first film in Leeds in 1888 before his mysterious disappearance in 1890.
Documentary film
Polish writer and filmmaker Bolesław Matuszewski was among those who identified the mode of documentary film. He wrote two of the earliest texts on cinema "Une nouvelle source de l'histoire" (eng. A New Source of History) and "La photographie animée" (eng. Animated photography). Both were published in 1898 in French and among the early written works to consider the historical and documentary value of the film. Matuszewski is also among the first filmmakers to propose the creation of a Film Archive to collect and keep safe visual materials.
Fuat Uzkınay
While in the army, on 14 November 1914 he made the documentary film ""Ayastefanos'taki Rus Abidesinin Yıkılışı"", depicting the destruction of the Russian Monument at Ayastefanos. This 150mt. film is known as the first documentary film of the Turkish Cinema. One year later, he founded, on the order of General Enver Paşa, the "Central Army Cinema Department". Sigmund Weinberg was the Chairman of the department and Uzkınay was his assistant. One year later, Uzkınay succeeded Weinberg in that position.
Cinema of Denmark
Danish cinema pioneer Peter Elfelt, a photographer, was the first Dane to make a film. Between the years of 1896 and 1912, he produced around 200 documentary films on life in Denmark. His first film was "Kørsel med Grønlandske Hunde" ("Traveling with Greenlandic Dogs"). Furthermore, he produced the first Danish feature film: "Henrettelsen" ("Capital Execution", 1903). The first film show in Denmark took place in the Panorama cinema on the Town Hall square in Copenhagen, in June 1896. However, the selection of films had been made and produced abroad.
Actuality film
The first actuality films date to the time of the very emergence of projected cinema. The Lumière Brothers in France were the principal advocates for this genre and also coined the term — "Actualités" — and used it as a descriptor in the printed catalogues of their films. "La sortie des usines Lumière" (1895) — the first film exhibited by the Lumières—is by default the earliest actuality film; it might have not been the first one made, but it was definitively the first one shown publicly, on December 28, 1895.
Cinema of Australia
The Athanaeum Hall in Collins Street, Melbourne, was a dance hall from the 1880s, which from time to time would provide alternative entertainment to patrons. In October 1896, it exhibited the first movie shown in Australia, within a year of the first public screening of a film in Paris on 28 December 1895 by the French Lumière brothers. The Athanaeum would continue screenings, but these early screenings were all short films. The earliest feature length narrative film in the world was the Australian produced "The Story of the Kelly Gang" (1906), also shown at the Athenaeum. The film was written and directed by Charles Taitand included several of his family. The film was also exhibited in the United Kingdom, and was commercially very successful.
Mockumentary
Early work, including Luis Buñuel's 1933 "Land Without Bread", Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds", various April Fools' Day news reports, and "vérité"-style film and television during the 1960s and 1970s, served as precursor to the genre. Early examples of mock-documentaries include "The Connection" (1961), "A Hard Day's Night", 1964, (written by Alun Owen, purporting to describe several days in the lives of The Beatles, that would be the first feature-length mockumentary), "David Holzman's Diary", 1967, "Pat Paulsen for President", 1968, "Take the Money and Run", 1969, "The Clowns", 1970, by Federico Fellini (a peculiar hybrid of documentary and fiction, a docufiction), and "All You Need Is Cash", 1978. Albert Brooks was also an early popularizer of the mockumentary style with his film "Real Life", 1979, a spoof of a PBS documentary.
Di Domenico brothers
The Di Domenico brothers created a documentary after the assassination of General Rafael Uribe Uribe, known as "El drama del 15 de octubre" which was first screened to the public on 21 November 1915. Regarded as the first feature documentary film of Colombia, the reconstruction of the murder, the usage of the assassins in the film, and the images of General Uribe's body caused controversy, which led to riots in some movie theatres. The usage of the assassins of General Uribe in the reconstruction of the murder was described by many newspapers as "disgusting" and that it was "criminal glorification". The controversy that this film caused led the brothers to cut the most controversial scenes of the film, before it was banned in Colombia and subsequently destroyed.
Culture of Australia
Australia's first dedicated film studio, the Limelight Department, was created by The Salvation Army in Melbourne in 1898, and is believed to be the world's first. The world's first feature-length film was the 1906 Australian production "The Story of the Kelly Gang". Tales of bushranging, gold mining, convict life and the colonial frontier dominated the silent film era of Australian cinema. Filmmakers such as Raymond Longford and W. J. Lincoln based many of their productions on Australian novels, plays, and even paintings. An enduring classic is Longford and Lottie Lyell's 1919 film "The Sentimental Bloke", adapted from the 1915 poems by C. J. Dennis. After such early successes, Australian cinema suffered from the rise of Hollywood.
Gabriela Samper
Gabriela Samper (31 March 1918 – 16 May 1974) was a Colombian teacher, puppet theater creator and documentary filmmaker. The first woman to participate in documentary filmmaking, she is remembered for her ethnographic short films which explored the diversity of Colombian culture. Winning numerous awards, her work is part of the collection of the Latin American Film Archive at the MOMA in Manhattan.
Ali Kazimi
Incorporating a similar first-person, self-reflexive narration is "Continuous Journey" (2004), the first feature-length documentary to examine the turning away of the "Komagata Maru" from Canada in 1914. After premiering, to a standing ovation, at the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto, the film has travelled widely. Continuous Journey has been credited for bringing y the history of this little known chapter in Canadian history
Willy Mullens
"Haghefilm" (named for "The Hague") was founded by Willy Mullens in 1914, and quickly established a reputation as the largest and best-known Dutch movie production company. Willy Mullens later became a well-known producer of documentary films; his "Holland Neutraal: Leger en Vlootfilm" (1917) received a royal premiere, in the presence of Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Hendrik. The two and a half hour long movie was the first documentary which attracted a mass audience. It showcased the Dutch army and navy and was commissioned by the Dutch Minister of War Bosboom, who intended for the movie to rally popular support for Dutch neutrality during World War I; on the other hand, the movie, with its display of military might, also aimed to show that the Dutch, despite their neutrality, were not to be thought of lightly. During World War II, Haghefilm delivered subtitles for the Dutch version of the "Die Deutsche Wochenschau", the official German-supplied newsreel.
Donald Brittain
"Fields of Sacrifice" (1964) is considered Brittain's first major film as director.
His other notable directorial credits include the 1964 feature documentary "Bethune", 1965 documentaries "Ladies and Gentlemen... Mr. Leonard Cohen" and "Memorandum" and the Genie Award-winning 1979 documentary "". He also directed the first-ever IMAX film, "Tiger Child" for Expo '70, and "Earthwatch", a 70mm film for Expo 86.
Walter Day
Appearing in approximately 20 documentary films as himself, Day’s role as the first eSports pioneer has been thoroughly examined on the big screen. His historical projects using vintage newspapers, high school yearbooks, antique business cards and commemorative trading cards have also appeared on the silver screen as well as in more than 100 TV news broadcasts. A partial list of his appearances in documentary films includes: Icons (2002), Coin-Op TV (2007), (2007), (2007), Frag (2008), The Video Craze (2013), Gamer Age (2014), The King of Arcades (2015), Nintendo Quest (2015) and Man vs Snake (2015). He has also appeared on national TV shows like The Bob Braun Show (1982), ABC-TV’s That’s Incredible (1983), Entertainment Tonight (1985), PM Magazine (1987), CBS This Morning (1988), and Gary Collins’ Hour Magazine (1989). Documentary footage of Walter Day’s early video game career filmed by Lewis Wilson and John Sorflaten in 1982 and 1983 is considered the earliest known attempt to film a documentary on the burgeoning video game culture. That vintage footage was the original source material used widely throughout both and .
Entre désir et incertitude
This is the first documentary film dedicated to Moroccan cinema; Between Desire and Uncertainty hands the microphone over to the filmmakers and film critics. Besides offering a brief historical approach, this documentary strives to identify the different movements that push Moroccan cinema. Likewise, it also makes very clear the dangers that threaten cinema's evolution.
Wei Shiyu
In July 2006, she made her first feature documentary , a rather personal documentation of her very first documentary experience with Professor Situ Zhaodun of Beijing Film Academy. This film follows Situ’s teaching of Hong Kong students in 2003 and 2005, but meanwhile constructs a brief biography of Situ through his family history. Shanghai-based director Peng Xiaolian speaks very highly of the work, calling it “a lyrical prose of a family history shared by many in China, and a work with depth about the very concept of documentation through puzzle pieces of documentary history.”
Documentary film
A documentary film is a nonfictional motion picture intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record. "Documentary" has been described as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" that is continually evolving and is without clear boundaries. Documentary films were originally called 'actuality' films and were only a minute or less in length. Over time documentaries have evolved to be longer in length and to include more categories, such as educational, observational, and even 'docufiction'. Documentaries are also educational and often used in schools to teach various principles. Social media platforms such as YouTube, have allowed documentary films to improve the ways the films are distributed and able to educate and broaden the reach of people who receive the information.
Goutam Ghose
He started making documentaries in 1973. Took active part in group theatre movement in Calcutta.
Also dedicated some time as a Photo Journalist. Made his first documentary– New Earth in 1973 followed by Hungry Autumn which won him the main award at the Oberhausen Film Festival. Since then, he has made a number of feature films and documentaries.Hungry Autumn (A documentary) :
First Motion Picture Unit
The first film project undertaken was a flight training aid titled, "Learn and Live." Set in "Pilot's Heaven", the feature-length film stars Guy Kibbee as Saint Peter. In order to demonstrate correct aviation techniques, twelve common flying mistakes are addressed. The film was highly regarded and led to a series of films including "Land and Live in the Desert," "Ditch and Live" and "Land and Live in the Jungle."
"Resisting Enemy Interrogation" was lauded by the military and according to documentarian Gregory Orr is considered to be the "best educational film" produced during the war. It tells the story of two captured flyers in dramatic and suspenseful fashion. They are interrogated at a German chateau. The layout of the chateau, the interrogation strategy and the overall experience of the film was extremely realistic. Airmen captured after viewing the film reported that they were able to successfully resist German efforts to extract information. The feature-length film was of the highest quality and in recognition the documentary was nominated for an Academy Award in 1944.
Robert J. Flaherty
Robert Joseph Flaherty, (; February 16, 1884 – July 23, 1951) was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, "Nanook of the North" (1922). The film made his reputation and nothing in his later life fully equaled its success, although he continued the development of this new genre of narrative documentary with "Moana" (1926), set in the South Seas, and "Man of Aran" (1934), filmed in Ireland's Aran Islands. Flaherty is considered the "father" of both the documentary and the ethnographic film.
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea
Shortly after the success of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1959, Gutiérrez, Espinosa, and several other young filmmakers founded the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). As ardent supporters of the Revolution, ICAIC was a filmmaker's collective which believed film to be the most important modern art form and the best medium to distribute revolutionary thought to the masses. Gutiérrez's "Esta Tierra Nuestra" ("This Land Of Ours"), was the first documentary made after the revolutionary victory. ICAIC focused mostly on documentaries and newsreels in its formative years, but eventually expanded into production of feature films, including Gutiérrez's early "Historias de la Revolución" ("Stories Of The Revolution") (1960), ICAIC's first fiction film, and "Doce sillas" ("The Twelve Chairs"), (1962). "Stories of the Revolution" was entered into the 2nd Moscow International Film Festival and "The Twelve Chairs" was entered into the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival.
Document of the Dead
The film was premiered at Joseph Papp's Public Theater on January 19, 1981 and it was subsequently entered into film festivals and won awards. But there weren't any offers good enough to properly distribute the film. In 1988, 10 years after filming, Frumkes was approached by a former student of his, Len Anthony, to release the film via his company Off Hollywood. Frumkes agreed, and Anthony asked him if he could update it "[b]ecause this is already old". Frumkes recorded additional interviews on the set of the film Romero was making at the time, "Two Evil Eyes". This part of the film totaled 24 minutes, was shot on videotape and cost another $50,000. The film, now running 85-minutes, saw its first home video release when Off Hollywood released it on VHS in 1989.
Edet Belzberg
With assistance from the Soros Documentary Fund (now the Sundance Documentary Fund), Belzberg made her first feature film "Children Underground", a documentary about five homeless street children who lived in a subway system. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival (2001), and received the Best Documentary Film Award from the International Documentary Association (2001). "Children Underground" was also nominated for a 2001 Academy Award and was one of the first recipients of the IFP Anthony Radziwill Documentary Prize.
Her 2005 documentary "Gymnast" studied three American female gymnasts preparing for the Olympic Games.
Introduction of Vitaphone Sound Pictures
Introduction of Vitaphone Sound Pictures is a 1926 Vitaphone short film released by Warner Brothers on August 6, 1926 that was the first talking film. It utilized the Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system.
Cinema of Estonia
The first Estonian documentary was created by Johannes Pääsuke in 1912 that was followed by a short film "Karujaht Pärnumaal" (Bear Hunt in Pärnumaa) in 1914. The first movie studio in Estonia, "Estonia Film Tartus" (The Tartu Studio of Estonia Film), was established by Johannes Pääsuke (1892–1918). Pääsuke produced documentaries, short films and pictures of Estonian nature for the Estonian National Museum. "Karujaht Pärnumaal" (Bear-Hunt in Pärnu County, 1914) was the first fictional short film made in Estonia. In total, eight films made by J. Pääsuke have survived and are stored at the Estonian Film Archives.
Walt Disney Studios (division)
Walt Disney Productions began production of their first feature-length animated film in 1934. Taking three years to complete, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", premiered in December 1937 and became the highest-grossing film of that time by 1939. In the 1940s, Disney began experimenting with full-length live-action films, with the introduction of hybrid live action-animated films such as "The Reluctant Dragon" (1941) and "Song of the South" (1946). That same decade, the studio began producing nature documentaries with the release of "Seal Island" (1948), the first of the "True-Life Adventures" series and a subsequent Academy Award winner for Best Live-Action Short Film.
National Archives of Georgia
“The Journey of Akaki Tsereteli in Racha-Lechkhumi” shot in 1912 by the cameraman Vasil Amashukeli is the first full-length chronicle-documentary film.
Beverley Palesa Ditsie
Ditsie has worked as an actress and director in television since 1980, making her the first black female child star in Television. In the late 1990s, she was in the reality show, "Livewire - Communities", and was the only black lesbian on the show. She has also written, directed and consulted in over 20 Documentaries, screened nationally and Internationally. Her first documentary film, "Simon and I" (2001), won a number of Audience Awards, including the 2004 Oxfam/Vues d’ Afrique best documentary, Montreal, Canada. The story of "Simon and I" is autobiographical, following her "personal and political journey" with Nkoli. Her film uses both interviews and archival material.
Raja Choudhury
Choudhury's first documentary film as art director was "Desi: South Asians of New York" for PBS Channel Thirteen in 2000 with Glazer Creative. He then started publishing a newsletter entitled Universal Quest with A.T. Mann. He went on to produce numerous videos for the American India Foundation, the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center and others. In 2006 he produced his first documentary film "Spirituality in the Modern World" which captured a dialogue between Ken Wilber and Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche. The DVD was released in 2007.
René Fortunato
Fortunato's first film "In the Footsteps of Palau", was a 20-minute short that told the history of the first Dominican filmmaker Francisco Palau. Palau was active in the 1920s and was a seminal figure of Dominican filmography. His second film "Frank Almánzar: Images of an artist", was debuted in 1987 and was about the Dominican visionary Bauhaus-trained engraver, illustrator and cultural animator Frank Almánzar. Then in 1988 he achieved national and international fame due to the success of his full-length documentary "April, the Trench of Honor". The documentary won Best Documentary of the Caribbean region, in the II International San Juan Film Festival. The documentary is an account of the political situation in the Dominican Republic from the death of dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1961, to the election of Joaquín Balaguer in 1966. Particular focus goes into the 1965 civil war and the subsequent U.S. military invasion. After the success of his documentary, Fortunato went on to make documentaries about Trujillo, Balaguer, and Juan Bosch, which bridge Dominican history and politics from the 1940s to the 1990s.
Cinematograph
The Lumière brothers made their first film, "Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory" ("Sortie de l'usine Lumière de Lyon"), that same year. The film was publicly screened at L'Eden, the world's first and oldest "cinéma", located in La Ciotat in southeastern France, on September 28, 1895. The first commercial, public screening of cinematographic films happened on 28 December 1895 at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris and was organised by the Lumière brothers. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory". Each of these early films is 17 meters long (approximately 56 feet), which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.
Cinema of Europe
Europeans were the pioneers of the motion picture industry, with several innovative engineers and artists making an impact especially at the end of the 19th century. Louis Le Prince became famous for his 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene, the first known celluloid film recorded. The Skladanowsky brothers from Berlin used their "Bioscop" to amaze the Wintergarten theatre audience with the first film show ever, from November 1 through 31, 1895. The Lumière Brothers established the Cinematograph; which initiated the silent film era, a period where European cinema was a major commercial success. It remained so until the art-hostile environment of World War II.
Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory
Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon (), also known as Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory and Exiting the Factory, is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière. It is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 "Roundhay Garden Scene" pre-dated it by seven years.
Michael Grigsby
Influenced by John Grierson’s documentary movement, emerging as part of Free Cinema, his approach reaching maturity during documentary television’s golden age, Grigsby at the later stages of his career came full circle. Still as active and enthusiastic as ever despite the current lack of support for independent, imaginative documentaries in British television, amongst a number of new documentary features, he was working to develop his first fiction feature film. He also returned to the place where he made his first film as a pupil, Abingdon School, to set up the AFU Abingdon Film Unit in 2003 with Jeremy Taylor, the school's Head of Drama, where over thirty boys (and girls from the neighbouring school of St Helen and St Katharine), aged 12 to 18, worked together under their supervision along with several other industry professionals to make a handful of short films each year. He was as proud of this new enterprise as of his finest films; he saw it as his own way of passing on the torch of the great British documentary tradition to the next generation of filmmakers. The Abingdon Film Unit itself has gained significant press, owing to films such as "Gravel & Stones" (2007), a documentary which focuses on the impact of disability on people in Cambodia, a country that, after thirty years of war, has one of the highest rates of disability in the developing world; and also "One Foot on the Ground" (2010): a 24-minute film which follows a young Moldovan basketball-player, Andreii Zelenetchii, as he struggles to keep alive his dream of playing professional in Europe’s poorest country.
Ateyyat El Abnoudy
While Abnoudy was nearing her graduation date she was also in the process of creating her first documentary "Horse of Mud". Abnoudy stated that she wanted to have what she referred to as a style of poetic realism. The ways in which she captured the images of her actresses was a way she states would show that the best. According to Van de Peer, the "Horse of Mud" wasn’t only Abnoudy’s first documentary, but it was also Egypt’s first documentary by a woman.
Coline Serreau
Her first film, the documentary film "Mais qu'est-ce qu'elles veulent?" (1978), literally: "But What Is It That They Want?", was a compilation of interviews with women from various backgrounds. The frankness of the statements shocked parts of the public.
Gautam Chattopadhyay
His first documentary was about the dhakis (drummers) of Bengal called "The Primal Call". After that he made several documentaries, including 'The Dinosaurs, The sun temple of konarak to Mr Habib Tanvir. He made a short film for an American community television "To Love is to Paint...",
Sound film
On March 12, 1929, the first feature-length talking picture made in Germany had its premiere. The inaugural Tobis Filmkunst production, it was not a drama, but a documentary sponsored by a shipping line: "Melodie der Welt" ("Melody of the World"), directed by Walter Ruttmann. This was also perhaps the first feature film anywhere to significantly explore the artistic possibilities of joining the motion picture with recorded sound. As described by scholar William Moritz, the movie is "intricate, dynamic, fast-paced ... juxtapos[ing] similar cultural habits from countries around the world, with a superb orchestral score ... and many synchronized sound effects." Composer Lou Lichtveld was among a number of contemporary artists struck by the film: ""Melodie der Welt" became the first important sound documentary, the first in which musical and unmusical sounds were composed into a single unit and in which image and sound are controlled by one and the same impulse." "Melodie der Welt" was a direct influence on the industrial film "Philips Radio" (1931), directed by Dutch avant-garde filmmaker Joris Ivens and scored by Lichtveld, who described its audiovisual aims:
Feast of Friends
The British documentary "The Doors Are Open" was the first rock film to be commissioned by UK TV and captures the band in London at the Roundhouse.
Safune
Moana (1926), one of the first documentary films made in the world, was filmed in Safune and directed by Robert J. Flaherty who lived in the village for more than a year. Flaherty was in Samoa from April 1923 to December 1924. He went to Samoa with his wife Frances Flaherty, their three young children, a red-haired Irish nursemaid (nicknamed 'Mumu' or 'Red' by the Samoans) and Flaherty's younger brother David Flaherty who would act as the film production manager. The tropical landscape of Safune was very different from the frozen icy setting of Flaherty's previous film Nanook of the North.
Blood and Donuts
"Blood and Donuts" was the first film to be produced by the Canadian Film Centre, and it was director Holly Dale's first narrative film. Dale had previously made her reputation in documentary films. Fellow director Vincenzo Natali served as a stand-in for Cronenberg and also provided storyboards.
Gloria Rolando
Her documentaries take as their subject matter the history of the African diaspora in the Caribbean, using filmmaking as a way to preserve culture and spiritual values. Her first documentary, "Oggun: An Eternal Presence" (1991), which paid homage to those who have preserved the African Yoruba religion in Cuba, won the Premio de la Popularidad at the Festival de Video Mujer e Imagen in Ecuador in 1994, and Rolando went on to make more than a dozen other documentaries, winning several awards.
Documentary film
Docufiction is a genre from two basic ones, fiction film and documentary, practiced since the first documentary films were made.
Damon Gameau
His first documentary feature, "That Sugar Film", was selected for Berlin Film Festival and IDFA and took out many awards around the world including Best Doc at the Australian Academy Awards. It is still the highest grossing Australian Documentary of all time across Australia and New Zealand.
Cinema of the Netherlands
In the years directly following the war, most effort was given to the reconstruction of the country; film was not a priority. In the late 1950s the Dutch film industry professionalized. The "Nederlands Filmfonds" (Netherlands Film Fund) was established in 1957, the "Nederlandse Filmacademie" (Netherlands Film Academy) in 1958. Documentary filmer Bert Haanstra made his first fiction film, Fanfare, in 1958. Even though the film was a big success, this success was only incidental. Dutch cinema did temporarily provide a sound of its own in this period, in the form of what is now considered to be the "Dutch documentary tradition" or "Dutch documentary school". Headed by Haanstra, who won an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject with 1959's "Glass" and also won prizes in Berlin and Cannes, the "movement" also included Herman van der Horst, who won a Golden Bear for Best Documentary and John Fernhout, whose "Sky Over Holland" won a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject in 1968.
Victor Ginzburg (director)
Ginzburg’s first feature-length documentary "The Restless Garden" (1993) was filmed in Moscow in 1991 and documented the cultural and sexual revolution taking place during the fall of the Soviet Union. The film premiered at the Boston International Film Festival in 1994. The film was provocative because of its eroticism and depiction of nudity and led to Ginzburg directing .
Ginzburg directed several episodes for the HBO documentary television series "Real Sex".
Merata Mita
Mita was the first indigenous woman and the first woman in Aotearoa New Zealand to solely write and direct a dramatic feature film, "Mauri" (1988) - notwithstanding Ramai Te Miha Hayward's co-direction of "To Love A Maori" (1972). An accomplished documentary director and producer for more than 25 years, Mita made landmark documentary films such as "Patu!" (1983) about the violent clashes between anti-apartheid protesters and the police during the controversial 1981 South African Springboks rugby tours in New Zealand. and "Bastion Point: Day 507" (1980), about the eviction of Ngāti Whātua from their traditional land. "Hotere" (2001) documented the life and work of well-known Māori artist Ralph Hotere. She also directed the music video "Waka" for hip-hop artist Che Fu.
History of film technology
In the United Kingdom, Birt Acres was one of the first to produce films as well as being the first travelling newsreel reporter. In 1894 he created a 70 mm format and filmed the Henley Royal Regatta. He went on to make some of Britain's first films with Robert W. Paul with a 35 mm movie camera, the Kineopticon, including "Incident at Clovelly Cottage", "The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race" and "Rough Sea at Dover".
Daniel Sekulich
Sekulich’s first documentary was "Deadly Inheritance" (1997), a look at the human impact of genetic testing, nominated for a Hot Docs! award. It followed a woman undergoing genetic testing for Huntington's disease. It was followed by "" (2001), a feature-length documentary about the painful legacy of war. Filmed on location in Russia, France, Bosnia and Vietnam, the documentary features personal accounts of individuals involved in the cleanup of war. It won United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Prize for Best Humanitarian Film.
The Harvest Shall Come
"The Spectator" said the film was "an excellent piece of work, notable for its effective and truthful presentation of the vital subject of life in this country on the land."
"The Harvest Shall Come" was named "Documentary of the Month" by "Documentary News Letter", which called it "the first genuine story film made with the documentary purpose and by documentary method."
It praised Max Anderson as one of the best documentary makers to appear for many years and called John Slater "an outstanding interpreter of working class character."
Sir Arthur Elton of the films division of the Ministry of Information said in 1943 that the film was one of the best documentary films that had been produced.
"The Harvest Shall Come" has been called "a far-sighted educational treatment of a major social problem."
Citations
Myanmar
Myanmar's first film was a documentary of the funeral of Tun Shein—a leading politician of the 1910s, who campaigned for Burmese independence in London. The first Burmese silent film Myitta Ne Thuya (Love and Liquor) in 1920 which proved a major success, despite its poor quality due to a fixed camera position and inadequate film accessories. During the 1920s and 1930s, many Burmese-owned film companies made and produced several films. The first Burmese sound film was produced in 1932 in Bombay, India with the title Ngwe Pay Lo Ma Ya (Money Can't Buy It). After World War II, Burmese cinema continued to address political themes. Many of the films produced in the early Cold War era had a strong propaganda element to them.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
While early reviews were more divided, modern film critics and historians have largely praised "Caligari" as a revolutionary film. Film reviewer Roger Ebert called it arguably "the first true horror film", and critic Danny Peary called it cinema's first cult film and a precursor for arthouse films. In October 1958, "Caligari" was ranked as the twelfth-best film of all time during a poll organized at the Brussels World’s Fair. With input from 117 film critics, filmmakers and historians from around the world, it was the first universal film poll in history. American film historian Lewis Jacobs said "its stylized rendition, brooding quality, lack of explanation, and distorted settings were new to the film world". Film historian and critic Paul Rotha wrote of it, "For the first time in the history of the cinema, the director has worked "through" the camera and broken with realism on the screen; that a film could be effective dramatically when not photographic and finally, of the greatest possible importance, that the mind of the audience was brought into play psychologically". Likewise, Arthur Knight wrote in "Rogue": "More than any other film, ("Caligari") convinced artists, critics and audiences that the movie was a medium for artistic expression". "Entertainment Weekly" included "Caligari" in their 1994 "Guide to the Greatest Movies Ever Made", calling it a "landmark silent film" and saying, "No other film's art direction has ever come up with so original a visualization of dementia". It holds a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 48 reviews.
Internationales Dokumentarfilmfestival München
The establishment of the DOK.fest Munich goes back to the initiative of the Bavarian section of the Documentary Film Association (AG DOK) Munich. AG DOK had the goal of making documentary films available to a wider audience. In cooperation with the Association Film Studio Munich, an association of local film initiatives, the first International Documentary Film Festival Munich was organized in 1985. The city of Munich supported the Festival. AGudrun Geyer was appointed director, and led the festival until 2001.
Documentary News Letter
Documentary News Letter was a magazine about documentary film founded by filmmaker John Grierson. The publication was developed as the wartime successor to "World Film News", which ceased publication in 1938, and sought to promote a "documentary approach to everyday living." It published its first edition in January 1940, with an editorial board that consisted of Grierson, Paul Rotha, Basil Wright, Arthur Elton and Thomas Baird.
History of animation
Many consider Walt Disney's 1937 "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" the first animated feature film, though at least seven films were released earlier. However, Disney's film was the first one completely made using hand-drawn animation. The previous seven films, of which only four survive, were made using cutout, silhouette or stop motion, except for one—also made by Disney seven months prior to Snow White's release—"Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons". This was an anthology film to promote the upcoming release of Snow White. However, many do not consider this a genuine feature film because it is a package film. In addition, at approximately 41 minutes, the film does not seem to fulfill today's expectations for a feature film. However, the official BFI, AMPAS and AFI definitions of a feature film require that it be over 40 minutes long, which, in theory, should make it the first animated feature film using traditional animation.
Beat Kuert
Beat Kuert trained himself in visual arts in the 1960s and 1970s in Zurich: there were few cinema schools in that period and Kuert was against these institutions that tried to maintain and teach ideologies from the past. At the time, artists felt the need to take their inspiration from the streets, breaking down traditional barriers between intellectuals and workers, between creators and viewers. While sharing those ideas and drawing on the vitality of that period, Kuert chose to make his first feature film in a natural setting, conducting a dialogue with his inner world and filming in the mountains. His works sought an introspective point of view and this aspect is still a constant feature of his work. Turnus Film AG in Zurich noticed the artist's experimental short films and documentaries, and between 1968 and 1970 Kuert worked for the company as an editor and director. In 1971, during a nine-month trip to Latin America, he shot his first feature-length documentary, "Ein Erfolg unserer Entwicklungshilfe", examining development policies in Latin America.
Social impact of YouTube
The 2011 film "Life in a Day," a feature-length YouTube-partnered documentary comprising scenes selected from 4,500 hours of amateur video footage from 80,000 submitters, was the first crowdsourced, user-generated film to be shown in cinemas. Director Kevin Macdonald explained that the film "wouldn't have been possible pre-Internet, specifically pre-YouTube".
Narrative film
Probably the first fictional film ever made was the Lumière's "L'Arroseur arrosé", which was first screened at the Grand Café Capucines on December 28, 1895. A year later in 1896, Alice Guy-Blaché directed the fictional film "La fee aux choux". Yet perhaps the best known of early fictional films is Georges Méliès’s "A Trip to the Moon" from 1902. Most films previous to this had been merely moving images of everyday occurrences, such as "L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat" by Auguste and Louis Lumière. Méliès was one of the first directors to progress cinematic technology, which paved the way for narratives as style of film. Narrative films have come so far since their introduction that film genres such as comedy or Western films, were, and continue to be introduced as a way to further categorize these films.
Documenteur
Documenteur also known as Documenteur: An Emotion Picture is a French-American feature film by French director Agnès Varda. The film debuted at the 1981 Toronto International Film Festival.
George Hickenlooper
His first feature-length documentary, "", explored the making of "Apocalypse Now". It won several awards, including the National Board of Review award for "Best Documentary", an American Cinema Editors award for "Best Edited Documentary", two Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awards for "Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming – Directing" and "Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Programming – Picture Editing", and the International Documentary Association award. Hickenlooper himself won an Emmy for direction.
Cinema of New Zealand
Merata Mita was the first Māori woman to write and direct a dramatic feature film, when she directed "Mauri" in 1988. An accomplished documentary film-maker, Mita made landmark documentaries including "Bastion Point: Day 507" (1980), about the occupation of land there, and "Patu!" (1983), a film about the controversial and violent anti-apartheid protests during the 1981 Springboks rugby tour from South Africa.
Mak Chun Kit
His second film, "Little People Big Dreams", about a little people theme park in China, was regional broadcaster Channel NewsAsia's first original feature film production. The documentary was selected for the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program | CNEX Workshop and Documentary Summit 2014, and won the Best Pitch Award at CNEX Chinese Doc Forum 2014. It made its world premiere at the acclaimed CPH:DOX Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival 2014, who wrote, "A touching film that in virtue of its sensitivity is a rebellion against a world where such a place actually exists." The film was in competition at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2015, won the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Lighthouse International Film Festival 2015, Best Social Awareness Programme at the Asian Television Awards 2015, and a Gold World Medal for Documentaries at the New York Festivals Television and Film Awards 2016. Gary Arnold, President of Little People of America, wrote, "The beauty of Little People Big Dreams is that it shines a light on the dwarf theme park in China, and it lets the dwarf performers tell their own story, and it allows viewers to reach their own conclusion about the theme park."
Carole Roussopoulos
In 1969 Roussopoulos and her husband, Paul, created a film collective called Video Out. In 1970, at the urging of her friend the author Jean Genet, she purchased a light-weight Sony Portapak camera and began to make documentaries. It is believed that she is the first woman in France to buy a video camera. That same year she made the documentary film "Genet parle d'Angela Davis" (known in English as "Angela Davis Is at Your Mercy") about the American political activist Angela Davis. During her early career, Roussopoulos also witnessed and filmed key events in the human rights crusades in Paris. For instance, her 1971 film "FHAR" (Front Homosexuel d'Action Révolutionnaire) documents the very first gay rights parade in Paris.
List of documentary films
This is an alphabetical list of documentary films with Wikipedia articles. The earliest documentary listed is "Fred Ott's Sneeze" (1894), which is also the first motion picture ever copyrighted in North America. The term "documentary" was first used in 1926 by filmmaker John Grierson as a term to describe films that document reality. For other lists, see and .
Pseudo-documentary
Orson Welles gained notoriety with his radio show and hoax "War of the Worlds" which fooled listeners into thinking the Earth was being invaded by Martians. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum says this is Welles' first pseudo-documentary. Pseudo-documentary elements were subsequently used in his feature films. For instance, Welles created a pseudo-documentary newsreel which appeared within his 1941 film "Citizen Kane", and he began his 1955 film, "Mr. Arkadin", with a pseudo-documentary prologue.
Film industry
"The Wrestlers" (1899) and "The Man and His Monkeys" (1899), directed and produced by Harischandra Sakharam Bhatawdekar (H. S. Bhatavdekar), were the first two films made by Indian filmmakers, which were both short films. He was also the first Indian filmmaker to direct and produce the first documentary and news related film, titled "The Landing of Sir M.M. Bhownuggree".
Documentary film
Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. The first film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' "Voices of Iraq", where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves.
Cinema of New Zealand
The history of cinema in New Zealand is almost as long as the medium itself. The first public screening of a motion picture took place in 1896. A documentary made in 1900 is the oldest surviving New Zealand film, while the first feature film made in New Zealand premiered in 1914. A small-scale industry developed between the 1920s and the 1960s, but it wasn't until the 1970s that locally made films began to attract significant audiences.
The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
The Titan: Story of Michelangelo is a 1950 German documentary film about the painter and sculptor Michelangelo. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 1952 it became the first feature-length documentary to be shown on network television.
The Silent World
"The Silent World" was the first of Cousteau's documentary films to win an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; "World Without Sun" also won in 1964. The film also won the "Palme d'Or" award at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, being the only documentary film to win the award until Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" repeated the feat in 2004.
Cinema of Ecuador
Cinematic production in Ecuador began in the 1920s, with the production of the first Ecuadorian dramatic feature film, "El Tesoro de Atahualpa", directed by the Ecuadorian Augusto San Miguel in 1924. Moreover, in the same decade, the Italian Carlos Crespi directed the major documentary "Los Invisibles Shuaras del Alto Amazonas". Between 1930 and 1931, the advent of talkies stopped the development of Ecuadorian film, which tried to cope with the new films using "live sound" ("sonorización en vivo"), that is, the interpretation of texts and songs simultaneously with the projection, though without success. Because of this, for around two decades Ecuadorian cinema revolved around documentaries, news programs, and promotional tourist films, with the exception of dramatic feature films in 1950. However, Ecuadorian cinema was promoted by intellectuals in the 1960s, including Ulises Estrella, director of the Cinemateca Nacional. During this period, Mexican-Ecuadorian co-productions proliferated. During the next decade, the documentary genre was strengthened, and in 1977 the Asociación de Autores Cinematográficos del Ecuador was legalized.
Nadia Labidi
"Fatima Amaria", made in 1993, was Labidi's first documentary film, looks at the life of a young woman in a religious community in southern Algeria; the women involved had never been filmed before, so Labidi felt it was important to win their trust before filming.
Asma El Bakry
El Bakry made a number of documentary and short films, before making her first feature as a director in 1991, "", which she also co-produced.
It could be argued that most of her documentaries reveal deep interest in Egyptian history and a keen desire to shed light on its past civilizations with the ultimate aim of instructing the new generation. In "Dahsha", for instance, she traces the history of wooden boats used by the ancient Egyptians until modern times. In "El Zaher District" ("Hay el Daher"), she sheds light on the history of that district in Cairo, which was established by the Sultan Zaher Bibars in the thirteenth century.
Animated documentary
The first recognized example of this genre is Winsor McCay's 1918 12-minute-long film "The Sinking of the Lusitania", which uses animation to portray the 1915 sinking of after it was struck by two torpedoes launched by a German U-boat; an event of which no recorded film footage is known to exist. 
Since the 1920s, animation has been used in educational and social guidance films, and has often been used to illustrate abstract concepts in mainly live-action examples of these genres. Early examples of fully animated educational films are "The Einstein Theory of Relativity" (1923) and "Evolution" (1925) by Max and Dave Fleischer. Walt Disney used it in films such as "Victory Through Air Power" (1943), "How to Catch a Cold" (1951) and "Our Friend the Atom" (1957).
Hoop Dreams
Originally intended to be a 30-minute short film produced for the Public Broadcasting Service, it eventually led to five years of filming and 250 hours of footage. It premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary. "Hoop Dreams" is the most recent documentary film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing. Despite its length (171 minutes) and unlikely commercial genre, it received high critical and popular acclaim, and grossed over $11 million worldwide. It is often considered by critics as one of the greatest documentary films of all time.
The Battle of the Somme (film)
In 1920 the original nitrate negative was passed to the Imperial War Museum for preservation. A nitrate protection archive master was made in 1921 and an acetate safety master in 1931. The nitrate masters were destroyed in the 1970s after the onset of irreversible nitrate decomposition. Excerpts have been taken for television documentaries, including "The Great War" (1964. BBC), "The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century" (1996, PBS) and "The First World War" (2003, Channel 4). The film was offered on VHS in 1987, as the first title from the Imperial War Museum film archive to be released on video. In 2005, "The Battle of the Somme" was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register for the preservation of global documentary heritage. The film was described by UNESCO as a "compelling documentary record of one of the key battles of the First World War [and] the first feature-length documentary film record of combat produced anywhere in the world" and had "played a major part in establishing the methodology of documentary and propaganda film."
Holly Dale
The content from this film motivated Dale and Cole's first feature documentary, "P4W: Prison for Women" (1981). After four years of communicating with officials, Dale and Cole were granted permission to film inside an all-woman prison outside of Kingston, Ontario, Canada. This marked the beginning of the documentary "P4W: Prison for Women" (1981). As co-directors and co-producers, Dale and Cole focused on the relationships between inmates as well as the prisoners' willingness to live despite ongoing challenges. This film was well received by critics and the public alike, winning several awards at film festivals and a Genie Award in 1982.
Open Source Cinema
Gaylor's "Basement Tapes" project and feedbacks blossomed into a documentary that was renamed prior to theatrical release to become "", an "open source" documentary about copyright and remix culture. Created over a period of six years, the film features the collaborative remix work of hundreds of people who have contributed to the Open Source Cinema website, helping to create, according to Gaylor, the "world's first open source documentary".
History of film technology
Kinemacolor released the first drama filmed in the process, "Checkmated", in 1910, and the first feature-length documentary, "With Our King and Queen Through India", in 1912. 
Kinemacolor projectors were installed in some 300 cinemas in Britain, and 54 dramatic films were produced. Four dramatic short films were made in Kinemacolor in the US in 1912–1913, and one in Japan in 1914. However, the company was not a success, partly due to the expense of installing the special Kinemacolor projectors.
Omar al-Qattan
Al-Qattan began his filming career by directing 15 to 20-minute documentaries and dramas while at film school, including his first documentary "Je suis...tu es?" (1987) and his first drama "La Danse" (1988), followed by the award-winning tragicomedy "Tale of the Blind Man and the Paralytic" in 1989, shown on Canal+.
Jerry Rothwell
Rothwell’s first feature documentary, "Deep Water", (co-directed with Louise Osmond), is about Donald Crowhurst’s ill-fated voyage in the 1968 round the world yacht race. The Hollywood Reporter said, ""Deep Water" is a stunning documentary that not only beautifully elucidates a nearly forgotten incident but touches on crucial themes involving isolation, sanity, self-worth, impossible dreams, the nature of heroism and limits of human endurance." The Baltimore Sun commented, "...the less said about this film the better. It's that good." The film premiered at Rome International Film Festival in 2008, where it won the award for Best Documentary. And Philadelphia's "The Inquirer", gave it 3 and half out of 4 stars, calling it "fascinating".
Grierson Awards
John Grierson is widely considered to be the godfather of documentary film, and he has also been attributed to have coined the name "documentary". He was born in Scotland in 1898. Grierson was the founder of a new movement of documentary film in the 1930s. He started the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit, and in 1933 the GPO Film Unit, gathering together such diverse and exciting talents as Humphrey Jennings, Paul Rotha and Alberto Cavalcanti. His ground-breaking work on the Scottish herring fleet, "Drifters", had its premiere in 1929 alongside the first British showing of Sergei Eisenstein’s "Battleship Potemkin". In 1936, he produced the celebrated "Night Mail", directed by Harry Watt with script by W.H. Auden and score by Benjamin Britten.
History of film
Films at the time were no longer than one reel, although some multi-reel films had been made on the life of Christ in the first few years of cinema. The first feature length multi-reel film in the world was the 1906 Australian production called "The Story of the Kelly Gang".
Holly Dale
As students, Dale and Cole completed their first short film, "Cream Soda," in 1976. This documentary revealed the demands on women employed in Toronto-based body-rub parlors. Meanwhile, their next film, "Minimum Charge No Cover" (1976), explored the lived experience of homosexuals, drag queens, sex workers, and substance users.
Cinema of Korea
Not merely a theater-operator, as the first film producer in Korea, Dansung-sa's owner, Pak Sung-pil, took an active part in supporting early Korean cinema. He financed the first Korean domestic film, "Loyal Revenge" (; "Uirijeok Gutu"), as well as the first Korean documentary film, "Scenes of Kyongsong City" and showed both at his theater on October 27, 1919. "Uirijeok Guto" was used as a kino drama, a live theatrical production against the backdrop of film projected on stage.
Documentaries and minor subjects of the Thanhouser Company
The Thanhouser Company (formerly the Thanhouser Film Corporation) was one of the first motion picture studios, founded in 1909 by Edwin Thanhouser. It operated until 1920. It produced over 1,000 films during its lifetime, but several dozen of the films were of small filler subjects, educational or documentaries. Many of these smaller subjects were listed as a quarter or half a reel in length and received very little critical review or analysis by film critics and the media.
Nudity in film
Nudist films first appeared in the early 1930s as documentaries, Utopian and docu-dramas promoting the healthy lifestyle of the naturist movement in Europe and the U.S. Earliest examples include "This Nude World" (1933), a narrated documentary filmed in the U.S., France, and Germany, and "Elysia, Valley of the Nude" (1933), a docu-drama filmed at a nudist camp in Elsinore, California. Throughout the thirties, nudist films like "Why Nudism?" (1933), "Nudist Land" (1937), and "The Unashamed" (1938) flourished in road shows, but disappeared entirely in the forties.
Little 8th Route Army
The first documentary on the subject was the 1938 (延安和八路军). The first movie to come before this puppetry animation was the 1961 ""Little Heroes"" (英雄小八路). Two movies were also made in 1978 ""Two Young 8th Route Army Soldiers"" (两个小八路) and ""We are the 8th Route Army Men"" (我们是八路军).