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1930s Documentary Movies

Public list by WPS with 89 movies or TV shows/series

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75 movies found (page 1/3):

About Nice(1930)

24min | Documentary
3.5/5 (with 56 votes)

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.

Directed by Jean Vigo

Land Without Bread(1933)

29min | Documentary
3.6/5 (with 62 votes)

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

Directed by Luis Buñuel - With Abel Jacquin, Alexandre O'Neill

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations(1938)

2h 6min | Documentary
3.5/5 (with 41 votes)

The First part of Olympia, a documentary about the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin by German Director Leni Riefenstahl. The film played in theaters in 1938 and again in 1952 after the fall of the Nazi Regime.

Directed by Leni Riefenstahl - With Adolf Hitler, Jesse Owens, Luz Long, Spyridon Louis, Rie Mastenbroek, Leni Riefenstahl, ...
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Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty(1938)

1h 40min | Documentary
3.4/5 (with 28 votes)

The Second part of Olympia, a documentary about the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin by German Director Leni Riefenstahl. The film played in theaters in 1938 and again in 1952 after the fall of the Nazi Regime.

Directed by Leni Riefenstahl - With Adolf Hitler, Jesse Owens, Luz Long, Spyridon Louis, Rie Mastenbroek, Leni Riefenstahl, ...
Rent Apple / iTunes Store | Buy Apple / iTunes Store

Taris(1931)

9min | Documentary
3.2/5 (with 34 votes)

Short documentary directed by Jean Vigo about the French swimmer Jean Taris. The film is notable for the many innovative techniques that Vigo uses, including close ups and freeze frames of the swimmer's body.

Directed by Jean Vigo - With Jean Taris

Night Mail(1936)

25min | Documentary
3.0/5 (with 15 votes)

This documentary short examines the special train on which mail is sorted, dropped and collected on the run, and delivered in Scotland on the overnight run from Euston, London to Glasgow.

Directed by Harry Watt, Basil Wright - With Stuart Legg, John Grierson

Working on the Douro River(1931)

20min | Documentary
3.6/5 (with 16 votes)

Short silent documentary from 1931 about those working on the River Douro in Oporto.

Directed by Manoel de Oliveira

Three Songs About Lenin(1934)

59min | Documentary
3.1/5 (with 13 votes)

This documentary, made up of 3 episodes, is based on three songs sung by anonymous people in Soviet Russia about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Directed by Dziga Vertov

Enthusiasm(1930)

1h 7min | Documentary
3.4/5 (with 14 votes)

A lyrical documentary on the lives of Coal miners in the Donbass who are struggling to meet their production quotas under the Five Year Plan.

Directed by Dziga Vertov

Life Is Ours(1936)

1h 6min | Drama, History
3.1/5 (with 5 votes)

A propaganda film of the communist party of France, showing how the comrades help the proletariat against the capitalists.

Directed by Jean Renoir, Jacques Becker, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jacques Brunius, Jean-Paul Le Chanois, André Zwobada, ... - With Jean Renoir, Jacques Becker, Gaston Modot, Jacques Brunius, Roger Blin, Charles Blavette, ...

Feind im Blut(1931)

1h 16min | Drama, Documentary

- No description / details available yet. -

Directed by Walter Ruttmann - With Gerhard Bienert, Margarete Kupfer

Romance of Radium(1937)

10min | History
2.9/5 (with 5 votes)

Romance of Radium is a 1937 American short film directed by Jacques Tourneur, and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This short film tells the story of the discovery of radium and how it is used in medicine. In 1937, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject (One-Reel) at the 10th Academy Awards.

Directed by Jacques Tourneur - With André Cheron
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The Spanish Earth(1937)

53min | War, Documentary
3.2/5 (with 8 votes)

A propaganda film made during the Spanish Civil War in support of the Republican government against the rebellion by Gen. Francisco Franco's forces who were backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The film would have been seen by those making it as a documentary.

Directed by Joris Ivens - With Dolores Ibárruri, Enrique Líster, Gustav Regler, José Díaz, Manuel Azaña

Rango(1931)

1h 6min | Documentary
4.8/5 (with 1 vote)

The story of Ali and his son Bin, natives of Sumatra, who hunt in a jungle village.

Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack - With Jaro Fürth

The House That Shadows Built(1931)

NR
| 47min | Documentary
3.5/5 (with 1 vote)

The House That Shadows Built (1931) is a short feature, roughly 48 minutes long, from Paramount Pictures made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the studio's founding in 1912. It was a promotional film for exhibitors and never had a regular theatrical release and includes a brief history of Paramount, interviews with various actors, and clips from upcoming projects (some of which never came to fruition). The title comes from a biography of Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, The House That Shadows Built (1928), by William Henry Irwin.

Directed by Friz Freleng - With Gloria Swanson

Hindenburg Disaster Newsreel Footage(1937)

5min | Documentary
3.7/5 (with 9 votes)

The airship Hindenburg, arriving from Europe, was being led to its mooring at Lakehurst, New Jersey when suddenly disaster struck. The hydrogen-filled zeppelin ignited, and was almost instantly transformed into an enormous fireball. In less than a minute, the entire ship had been consumed by flames. The Hindenburg explosion marked the end of the budding airship travel industry.

The Private Life of the Gannets(1934)

10min
2.7/5 (with 3 votes)

A 1934 GB production that was picked up in 1937 by Educational for 20th Century Fox distribution about the gannet, (a beautiful white and exceedingly graceful bird deemed the best fisherman in the world), that inhabits a small rocky island off the coast of Wales. The film won the 1938 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (One- Reel).

Directed by Julian Huxley

The Conquest of the Air(1936)

1h 11min | History, Documentary
2.1/5 (with 2 votes)

This early docudrama uses dramatic re-enactment, working models of early flying machines, and archival footage to trace man's attempts to fly from ancient times through the 1930's.

Directed by Zoltan Korda - With Laurence Olivier

Mussolini Speaks(1933)

1h 14min | Documentary

Mussolini Speaks is a 1933 documentary film highlighting the first 10 years of Benito Mussolini’s rule as Prime Minister of Italy. The film, narrated by U.S. radio broadcaster Lowell Thomas, includes footage of the Fascists’ March on Rome, the Lateran Treaty between Italy and The Holy See, engineering projects in Italy and North Africa, and excerpts of speeches by Mussolini.

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer - With Lowell Thomas, Benito Mussolini

Swing High(1932)

10min | Documentary
2.9/5 (with 3 votes)

Swing High is a 1932 American Pre-Code short documentary film directed by Jack Cummings. In 1932, it was nominated for an Academy Award at the 5th Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Novelty). The film documents The Flying Codonas, a family of flying trapeze artists.

Directed by Jack Cummings - With Alfredo Codona, Edward Codona

Hitler's Reign of Terror(1934)

55min | Documentary

A documentary meant to show Americans what had been going on in Germany since Hitler's rise, centered on a fact finding trip by Cornelius Vanderbilt, with newsreel footage of book burnings and such.

Directed by Michael Mindlin

With Byrd at the South Pole(1930)

1h 22min | Documentary
3.2/5 (with 6 votes)

With Byrd at the South Pole (1930) is a documentary film about Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd and his 1st quest to the South Pole beginning at the Little America-Exploration Base. The film's soundtrack consists mostly of music and sound effects, with narration read by Floyd Gibbons. The film won at the 3rd Academy Awards for Best Cinematography.

With Richard E. Byrd, Bernt Balchen, Paul Siple, Norman D. Vaughan

Granton Trawler(1934)

11min | Documentary
2.5/5 (with 9 votes)

Documentary following an Edinburgh fishing trawler, the "Isabella Grieg".

Directed by John Grierson

Around the World with Douglas Fairbanks(1931)

1h 20min | Documentary

With the advent of sound, the world's leading screen idol, Douglas Fairbanks, experienced a downturn in his fortunes. His thin, reedy voice was not suited to the talkies, his marriage to Mary Pickford was on the outs, and his son, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., had replaced him as a major box-office draw. Faced with the Hollywood equivalent of a mid-life crisis, Doug called up three of his best friends - director Victor Fleming, cinematographer Henry Sharp, and production manager Charles Lewis - and took them on a six-month tour of Asia, ostensibly to shoot a travelogue for United Artists (of which Fairbanks was still a major shareholder.) Their first stop is Honolulu, followed in quick succession by Japan, China, Peking, Hong Kong, Indochina, the Philippines, Siam, and India. Fairbanks and company spend time at such noteworthy spots as the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, the Summer Palace and the Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum.

Directed by Douglas Fairbanks, Victor Fleming - With Douglas Fairbanks, Sessue Hayakawa

Dealers in Death(1934)

1h 4min | Documentary

This documentary film is a pacifistic polemic that presents the argument that the world's largest munitions works, principally those in Europe, work in conjunction with one another, even when their countries are wartime enemies. These munitions works, in the interest of making money, manipulate wartime conditions to prolong wars.

Igloo(1932)

1h 10min | Documentary

Documentary detailing the hardships of life among Alaskan Natives.

Directed by Ewing Scott - With Gayne Whitman

Nanking(1938)

1h 20min | Documentary

Propaganda documentary about the fall of Nanking. Considered for a long time as a lost film, it was discovered in Beijing, China, in the year 1995.

Wings Over Everest(1934)

32min | Documentary
2.5/5 (with 3 votes)

A documentary about the first flight over Mt Everest.

Directed by Geoffrey Barkas, Ivor Montagu

Lullaby(1937)

58min | Documentary
4.1/5 (with 3 votes)

A 1937 Soviet documentary film directed by Dziga Vertov. The film was shot to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution. It focuses on the women and the role of motherhood, featuring images from across the Soviet Union, in particular the Far East.

Directed by Dziga Vertov

Africa Speaks!(1930)

1h 15min | Documentary, Adventure, History
2.0/5 (with 1 vote)

Explorer Paul Hoefler leads a safari into central Africa and what was then called the Belgian Congo, in the regions inhabited by the Wassara and the famous Ubangi tribes.

Directed by Walter Futter
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Tags: #movies #documentaries #decade #1930
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