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Grierson on Documentary: The Last Interview

1972; University of California Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1211408

1533-8630

Elizabeth Sussex, John Grierson,

Cinema and Media Studies

John Grierson, son of a Scottish minister, was the prophet of an idea which was breath-taking in a day when no one used film for anything except entertainment: he proposed that it should be poetry and that it should address itself to the actual social problems and possibilities of modern industrial society. Armed with guile, determination, and a caustic wit (which can be studied in his book, Grierson on Documentary) he trained a generation of young directors, and produced a host of films-in which ordinary working people appeared on the screen for the first time. He set up the National Film Board of Canada; he traveled about the world thinking and talking about communications problems-to which, as in this interview, he often proposed novel approaches. Crusty, sometimes profane, he was a man with a vision-of how film, and other media, might serve the people; his ideas influenced everyone in the film world, and we must come to terms with them as we struggle for new understandings of the media in our world. Grierson died last February; the following text is drawn from a day-long conversation held shortly before his death. It will also appear in Elizabeth Sussex's book on British documentary, to appear in 1973.