1920s Documentary Movies

Come take an avant-garde walk in the Montparnasse of the late 1920's. This district of Paris, filmed in a most unusual way, shows how dedicated it is to art. Visit its art galleries and exhibitions, take a glimpse of famous painter Fujita, of Luis Buñuel eyeing the legs of beautiful Parisian passing the terrace of the café where he sits, of Italian futurists Marinetti, Prampolini and Russolo.

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious-- instead it's a witches' brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.

A film about the Nuremberg Party Congress of the NSDAP in 1929.

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

An animated film exploring what it might take to communicate with Mars, using mirrors, huge flashing electric lights or gigantic strips of black cloth set out in the desert.

A short, hand-tinted promotional film made by the D'Oyly Carte Opera company to show off the new wardrobe and set dressing for the 1926 production of The Mikado. About six scenes from The Mikado are shown, then designer Charles Rickets steps onto the stage with a final look at the costumes and the film ends. The players in the production are legendary Savoyards, well-known from recordings of the period, but this is the only time a movie camera caught them in their roles, though sadly minus the singing. About four nitrate prints of this film are known to exist; two of which are at the BFI in London.

Documentary focusing on a cesarean section in a hospital in São Paulo.

An ironic look at what it is like to be beautiful for a woman (and handsome for a few men) in the Paris of the late twenties.

Captain Edward A. Salisbury was a noted millionaire explorer and writer, whose exploration stories of the islands of the South Seas Pacific appeared often in "The National Geographic," and other magazines in the early part of the 20th-century, spent 18 months exploring the New Hebrides islands where head-hunting and cannibalism was practiced by some of the natives. The footage shot by Captain Edward A. Salisbury was put together to make this film. Captain Salisbury explained that 'gow' was the native term for the practice of head-hunting, and was not the name of one of the head-hunters.

Under the Southern Cross also known as The Devil's Pit or Taranga, is a 1929 American drama film set in New Zealand, directed by Lew Collins for Universal Studios, who also wrote the screenplay. Originally titled Taranga by the original director Alexander Markey, but was completed by Collins and released as Under the Southern Cross in 1929, then with the introduction of sound was given a soundtrack and retitled The Devil’s Pit in 1930. The film was shot on White Island, which has an active volcano. It is one of four films (with Down on the Farm, Hei Tiki and On the Friendly Road) which lay claim to be the first "New Zealand talkie", although dubious as the sound was added to the 1930 release in the United States. Only fragments of out-takes are left. The film probably has no connection with the 1927 British film of the same name, directed by Gustav Pauli.

A combination of live action footage and stop-action animation is utilized to illustrate the theory of evolution.

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

First National gala celebrity banquet with stars.

A serial of short instructional films using footage of Babe Ruth to explain the fundamentals of playing baseball.

Blaise Cendrars' AUTOUR DE LA ROUE (1923), a behind-the-scenes short documenting the production.

The founding of the first English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1612 and the many problems that confronted the struggling colonists are depicted.

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: IV. Congress of the Comintern / Congress of the Profintern.

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Up the Eiffel Tower in Paris / Moscow / Auto race Petrograd – Moscow / Aspects of everyday Soviet life / Peasant from Jaroslavl' visiting Moscow / Ceremonial introduction of a newborn into a workers' collective

In the South Seas, Samoan village life is portrayed with a painterly eye. Blending ethnographic detail with a romanticized 'Gauguin idyll', the film celebrates daily rituals, communal traditions, and the passage into adulthood, suffused pride of beauty and pride of strength.

A propaganda film about the beautiful country Norway, meant for tourists abroad.

Inflation (1928) is an experimental silent film at eight minutes which is sometimes categorized as a documentary. By now Richter is well beyond playing with light & shadow. Inflation explores the subject of money through photographs & with with stop motion animation techniques, adding faces of people impoverished & enriched by the unpredictability of finance. It functions almost as a political cartoon in motion, building to a chaotic & catastrophic climax.

Documenting the trip of the airship "Norge" across the Pole ocean, called Roald Amundsen, Ellsworth and Nobiles flying expedition 1926.

Documentary of the H.A. and Sidney Snow expedition to the Far North in search of the Steffansson Expedition.

The first Portuguese documentary. A remarkable look at the lives of the working people of Nazaré, a fishing town in Western Portugal.

Emak-Bakia (Basque for Leave me alone) is a 1926 film directed by Man Ray. Subtitled as a cinépoéme, it features many techniques Man Ray used in his still photography (for which he is better known), including Rayographs, double exposure, soft focus and ambiguous features. The film features sculptures by Pablo Picasso, and some of Man Ray's mathematical objects both still and animated using a stop motion technique.

“Roald Amundsen – Lincoln Ellsworths flyveekspedisjon 1925″ is a new DVD release of film footage from the nearly disastrous 1925 aeroplane expedition led by Norwegian polar hero Roald Amundsen. Financed by american businessman Lincoln Ellsworth, who also was a member of the expedition, the aeroplanes were registered as N24 and N25 and subsequently equipped for polar flights. They took off from King´s Bay in Svalbard on May 21st in an attempt to carry out the first transpolar flight of the North Pole, in order to establish once and for all whether there was in fact land in the area.

Documentary following Roald Amundsen's expedition from Seattle to Nome in Alaska and further to East Cape and up to the iced poles in C.S. Homes.

Simba: The King of the Beasts is an 1928 American black-and-white silent documentary film, directed by Martin and Osa Johnson, which features the couple's four-year expedition to track the lion across Kenyan veld to his lair.

The Dangers of the Fly is an educational film made by Ernesto Gunche and Eduardo Martínez de la Pera, also responsible for Gaucho Nobility (1915), the biggest blockbuster of Argentinean silent cinema. De la Pera was a talented photographer, always willing to try new gadgets and techniques. This film experiments with microphotography in the style of Jean Comandon's films for Pathé and it is part of a series which included a film about mosquitoes and paludism and another one about cancer, which are considered lost. Flies were a popular subject of silent films and there are more than a dozen titles featuring them in the teens and early twenties.

German documentary about Hollywood

Wunder der Schöpfung is an extraordinary, fascinating Kulturfilm trying to explain the whole human knowledge of the 1920s about the world and the universe. 15 special effects experts and 9 cameramen were involved in the production of this film which combines documentary scenes, historical documents, fiction elements, animation scenes and educational impact. It its beautifully colored, using tinting and toning in a very elaborated way. Some visual ideas in the sequences with a space shuttle visiting different planets in the universe seem to have to be the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Two Penny Magic (Zweigroschenzauber) starting off with a little magic trick. It then presents an array of images from swimmers, bicyclers, murderers, airplanes in flight, boxers, lovers, runners, becoming in the end a collection of images in a magazine.

A documentary of Roald Amundsen's explorer boat 'Maud' and it's expedition from 1922-1925 of the Polar area.

Documentary short film depicting the filmmaking activity at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, featuring dozens of stars captured candidly and at work.

A Man Ray documentary short on bullfighting.

Tropical Nights is a true “scenic.” Putting aside conventional narrative, the film tells its story by following the lights and shadows on a Caribbean island over the course of a diurnal cycle. As day evolves into night and back to dawn, the camera moves from close-up to striking vistas, with color toning accentuating the mood.

In Race Symphony (1928), Richter documents and celebrates a typical day at the German races, where a sophisticated people turn up in droves to gape, gasp, place a bet, and celebrate a well-deserved win.

A trip through Norway, visiting the biggest cities, the fjords and mountains. Visiting farming communities as well as factories on the way, with great athletes, like Sonia Henie and meeting all from ordinary people to the King.