Robert J. Flaherty’s follow-up to Nanook of the North shifts from the Arctic to the South Seas, portraying Samoan village life with a painterly eye. Blending ethnographic detail with a…

The shift of the crown was paralleled by a new epoch of cinema in Denmark. Peter Elfelt had been the dominant figure in early Danish film. After some rather insignificant…

This documentary short examines the special train on which mail is sorted, dropped and collected on the run, and delivered in Scotland on the overnight run from Euston, London to…

This short documentary, presented and directed by MGM sound engineer Douglas Shearer, goes behind the scenes to look at how the sound portion of a talking picture is created.

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany…

An early example of ultra-realism, this movie contrasts the quiet, bucolic life in the outskirts of Paris with the harsh, gory conditions inside the nearby slaughterhouses. Describes the fate of…

A showcase of German chancellor and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.

A man (Thomas Edison’s assistant) takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. This is one of the earliest Thomas Edison films and was the second motion picture to be copyrighted…

Water Birds is a 1952 short documentary film directed by Ben Sharpsteen. The film delves into the still waters of lagoons and marshes to the wild blue wilderness of the…

Stanley Kubrick’s short documentary about Father Fred Stadtmueller, a Catholic priest serving a vast 4,000-square-mile parish in rural New Mexico. To reach his scattered congregation, he pilots his own Piper…

Documentary short by Humphrey Jennings

Short silent documentary from 1931 about those working on the River Douro in Oporto.