Filmmaker
Grierson returned to Great Britain in 1927 armed with the sense that film could be enlisted to deal with the problems of the Great Depression, and to build national morale and national consensus. Filmmaking for Grierson was an exalted calling; the Filmmaker a patriot. In all of this there was more than a little elitism, a stance reflected in Grierson's many dicta of the time: "The elect have their duty." "I look on cinema as a pulpit, and use it as a propagandist."
In the US Grierson had met pioneering documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty. Grierson respected Flaherty immensely for his contributions to documentary form and his attempts to use the camera to bring alive the lives of everyday people and everyday events. Less commendable in Grierson's view was Flaherty's focus on exotic and faraway cultures. ("In the profounder kind of way", wrote Grierson of Flaherty, "we live and prosper each of us by denouncing the other"). In Grierson's view, the focus of film should be on the everyday drama of ordinary people. As Grierson wrote in his diaries: "Beware the ends of the earth and the exotic: the drama is on your doorstep wherever the slums; are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty." "'You keep your savages in the far place Bob; we are going after the savages of Birmingham,' I think I said to him pretty early on. And we did.")
On his return to England, Grierson was employed on a temporary basis as an Assistant Films Officer of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), a governmental agency which had been established in 1926 to promote British world trade and British unity throughout the empire. One of the major functions of the EMB was publicity, which the Board accomplished through exhibits, posters, and publications and films. It was within the context of this State funded organization that the "documentary" as we know it today really got its start.
In late 1929 Grierson and his cameraman, Basil Emmott, completed his first film, Drifters, which he wrote, produced and directed. The film, which follows the heroic work of North Sea herring fishermen, was a radical departure from anything being made by the British film industry or Hollywood. A large part of its innovation lie in the fierce boldness in bringing the camera to rugged locations such as a small boat in the middle of a gale, while leaving relatively less of the action staged. The choice of topic was chosen less from Grierson's curiosity than the fact that he discovered that the Financial Secretary had made the herring industry his hobbyhorse. It premiered in a private film club in London in November 1929 on a double-bill with Eisenstein's then controversial film The Battleship Potemkin (which was banned from general release in Britain until 1954), and received high praise from both its sponsors and the press.
After this success, Grierson moved away from film direction into a greater focus on production and administration within the EMB. He became a tireless organizer and recruiter for the EMB, enlisting a stable of energetic young filmmakers into the film unit between 1930 and 1933. Those enlisted included filmmakers Basil Wright, Edgar Anstey, Stuart Legg, Paul Rotha, Arthur Elton, Humphrey Jennings, Harry Watt, and Alberto Cavalcanti. This group formed the core of what was to become known as the British Documentary Film Movement. Robert Flaherty himself also worked briefly for the unit.
In 1933 the EMB Film Unit was disbanded, a casualty of Depression era economics. Grierson's boss at the EMB moved to the General Post Office (GPO) as its first public relations officer, with the stipulation that he could bring the EMB film unit with him. Grierson's crew were charged with demonstrating the ways in which the Post Office facilitated modern communication and brought the nation together, a task aimed as much at GPO workers as the general public. During Grierson's administration, the GPO Film Unit produced a series of groundbreaking films, including Night Mail (dir. Basil Wright and Harry Watt, 1936) and Coal Face (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935). In 1934 he produced at the GPO Film Unit the award winning The Song of Ceylon (dir. Basil Wright) which was sponsored jointly by the Ceylon Tea Propagands Bureau and the EMB.
Grierson eventually grew restless with having to work within the bureaucratic and budgetary confines of government sponsorship. In response, he sought out private industry sponsorship for film production. He was finally successful in getting the British gas industry to underwrite an annual film program. Perhaps the most significant works produced during this time were Housing Problems (dir. Arthur Elton, Edgar Anstey, John Taylor, and Grierson's sister Ruby Grierson, 1935).
In 1938, Grierson was invited by the Canadian government to study the country's film production. He proposed that the government create a national coordinating body for the production of films. In 1939, Canada created the National Film Commission, which would later become the National Film Board of Canada. Grierson was the first Commissioner of the Board. When Canada entered World War II in 1939, the NFB focused on the production of propaganda films, many of which Grierson directed. After the war, it focused on producing documentaries that reflected the lives of Canadians. The NFB is recognized around the world for producing quality films, many of which have won Academy Awards.
In 1945 Grierson was dismissed from his post as Commissioner of the NFB after allegations of communist sympathy regarding several of the films the Board had produced during the war. Following his dismissal, and that of three of his coworkers, Grierson returned to Scotland.
During the 1950s he worked at Southall Studios in West London.
From 1957 to 1967 Grierson hosted a successful weekly television program on Scottish television, This Wonderful World, which showed excerpts from outstanding documentaries. In 1957 he received a special Canadian Film Award.
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