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II','
T II E C I N E-T E (' II NIC] A N D e.-Jan., 1937-8
THE FUTURE OF DOCUMENTARY
by
JOHN GRIERSON
Stills by courtesy of Strand Film Co., from the Paul Rotha production, "To-day We Live," directed by Ralph Bond and Ruby Gricrson.
F1KST. as I am writing for technicians, lei us get known that if we sold it hard enough, created enough
straight on that won! documentary. I sec Michael snobberj around it, Wardour Street, with its usual sense
Powell has been raising a great fuss because the of inferiority, would ash no questions and swallow it whole.
critics called Edye <if tin World a documentary. Nothing less has happened. 1 used to he ottered two
lie doesn't like it because Wardour Street thinks there hundred feet in the pictorials. To-daj when we care to
is something highbrow and difficult about documentary go into the theatres, which is not often, we get West End
and the commercial success of his line picture is thereby releases and featurette prices. I confess, however, that
prejudiced. Will. I like it and for these ven reasons. It we have learned something about making films in the
is time the cinema got less scared about being highbrow interval and you can't blame Arthur Pent tor that. There
and difficult, ft has been playing tag with the sevenpenny ma\ even be some uses in adversity. But the fact is
novelette outlook long enough. Men cannot live bv bread to-day that we like the word documentary and just
alone and the cinema cannot live forever on the excitations cause so niau\ others dislike it. It marks our difference
here to-day and gone to-morrow of mere entertain and our vanity. It indicates, by its ven ugliness, that
meiit . As a full blown medium of expression there are we are the educators and uplifters oi the good old breed.
other things it can do as well. It can inspire a bit. It >\\ The verj fact that the word is ugl;j and essentially un
explain a bit. It can cut off slices of fact and bring them entertaining keeps the commercial people from stealing it
alive. And documentary is one part ol the attempt to and gives the group 1 represent an effective monopoly, do that other thing with the cinema.
Personally, I have never worried much about th
attitude of Wardour Street. Representing, as it does, the
more naive uses of the cinema, I have never expected it
to understand what documentary was alter. I have onh
Who arc we to throw away a commercial asset'
S] caking more seriously, there is nothing mysterious about it. In documentary (French: Documentaire: based on fact) we have been concerned to describe actualities and interpret them. Remember the onlj model we had