John Grierson was a documentary maker in the 20th century, creating the term documentary through his pioneering work with examples such as 'Housing Problems' and 'Coal Face'. His idea of documentaries was to give people a glimpse into a live of someone else.
He described documentary as 'The creativity of actuality'. The first films screened were often referred to as 'actualities' because the films, by the Lumiere brothers, were brief segments of everyday life He also stated that 'You photograph the natural life, but you also, by your juxtaposition of detail, create an interpretation of it'.
Most historians also believe that the first documentary was 'Nanook of the North', from 1921, by Robert Flaherty. In this documentary, Flaherty recorded his travels in the Canadian Arctic as he was an American explorer and this was released as a feature film. Although Grierson thought that Flaherty was too focused on the aesthetics of the feature film and hadn't portrayed enough of the social purposed of the film to demonstrate the benefits of industrial development.
Furthermore, John Grierson established the style of having a voice of God commentary by having a speaker over the top of images and outline the verbal argument.
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