John Grierson Video | Clips from Films Directed and Interviews

John Grierson (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. According to popular myth, in 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" to describe a non-fiction film. Grierson was born in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland. His father was a schoolmaster, his mother a suffragette and ardent Labour Party activist. From an early age, both parents steeped their son in liberal politics, humanistic ideals, and Calvinist moral and religious philosophies, particularly the notion that education was... MORE

John Grierson (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. According to popular myth, in 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" to describe a non-fiction film. Grierson was born in Deanston, near Doune, Scotland. His father was a schoolmaster, his mother a suffragette and ardent Labour Party activist. From an early age, both parents steeped their son in liberal politics, humanistic ideals, and Calvinist moral and religious philosophies, particularly the notion that education was essential to individual freedom and that hard and meaningful work was the way to prove oneself worthy in the sight of God. After service on minesweepers in the Royal Navy during World War I, Grierson entered the University of Glasgow, where he spent a good part of his academic career enmeshed in impassioned political discussion and leftist political activism. In 1924, after graduating from the university in English and Moral Philosophy, he received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship to study in the United States at the University of Chicago, and later at Columbia and the University of LESS