John Grierson
John Grierson - A Famous Film-maker
John Grierson (1898 - ) helped to found the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit in 1928. His film about life in the herring fleets, Drifters in 1929, greatly influenced documentary film-making through its human scale, realism and sophisticated camera-work and montage. He believed that material shot from real life could, in the hands of an artist, become a new essential art form more significant than the fictional studio film. He later helped found the G.P.O. Film Unit, Central Film Library, National Film Board of Canada, Group 3 etc. He was Director of Mass Media at UNESCO in 1947, later Controller (films) in the Central Office of Information in London. Working more as producer than director, his influence on other directors has been very important, his influence on productions have been Aero-Engine (1934, directed by Arthur Elton), BBC The Voice of Britain (1934, in collaboration with Alberto Cavalcanti), Night Mail (1936), and on TV the World in Action series and This Wonderful World.
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