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1920s Documentary Movies

Public list by WPS with 40 movies or TV shows/series

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40 movies found (page 1/2):

Nanook of the North(1922)

1h 19min | Documentary
3.5/5 (with 122 votes)

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.

Directed by Robert J. Flaherty - With Berry Kroeger

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City(1927)

1h 9min | Documentary, History
3.9/5 (with 44 votes)

A train speeds through the country on its way to Berlin, then gradually slows down as it pulls into the station. It is very early in the morning, about 5:00 AM, and the great city is mostly quiet. But before long there are some signs of activity, and a few early risers are to be seen on the streets. Soon the new day is well underway. It's just a typical day in Berlin, but a day full of life and energy.

Directed by Walter Ruttmann

Moana(1926)

1h 17min | Documentary
3.3/5 (with 16 votes)

Robert J. Flaherty's South Seas follow-up to Nanook of the North is a Gauguin idyll moved by "pride of beauty... pride of strength.".

Directed by Robert J. Flaherty

Manhatta(1921)

11min | Documentary
3.3/5 (with 28 votes)

Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall St. or stroll more languorously through a cemetery. Ranks of skyscrapers extrude columns of smoke and steam. In plain view. Or framed, as through a balustrade. A crane promotes the city's upward progress, as an ironworker balances on a high beam. A locomotive in a railway yard prepares to depart, while an arriving ocean liner jostles with attentive tugboats. Fading sunlight is reflected in the waters of the harbor. The imagery is interspersed with quotations from Walt Whitman, who is left unnamed.

Directed by Charles Sheeler, Paul Strand

Ways to Strength and Beauty(1925)

1h 44min | Documentary
3.3/5 (with 2 votes)

The perfect body as an object of cult worship. Based on the mass sports and body worship movement of the 1920s, the film propagates physical training and shows in stylized documentary scenes aspects of physical hygiene, gymnastics, sports and dancing as well as scenes in which supposed sportsmen of antiquity pose naked.

Directed by Nicholas Kaufmann, Wilhelm Prager - With Rudolf Bode, Jack Dempsey, David Lloyd George, Jenny Hasselquist, Gerhart Hauptmann, Camilla Horn, ...

The Great White Silence(1924)

1h 48min | Documentary
3.8/5 (with 18 votes)

Herbert Ponting travelled to Antarctica as part of Captain Scott's ill-fated South pole expedition and shot the footage that makes up this extraordinary documentary.

Directed by Herbert Ponting - With Robert Falcon Scott, Herbert Ponting

Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life(1925)

1h 11min | Documentary
3.8/5 (with 10 votes)

A silent documentary which follows a branch of the Bakhtiari tribe of Persia as they and their herds make their epic seasonal journey to better pastures.

Directed by Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Simba: The King of the Beasts(1928)

1h 27min | Documentary
3.5/5 (with 1 vote)

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.

Directed by Martin Johnson

The Bridge(1928)

16min | Documentary
3.2/5 (with 9 votes)

The Hefbrug may not be a remarkably beautiful bridge, but through a mix of close-ups, long shots, bird’s eye views and low angles, Joris Ivens conveys a sense of the bridge’s structure, its intricate mechanisms and ways of operating, the way it fits into the overall transport infrastructure and therefore the immense importance of this bridge for the whole city of Rotterdam.

Directed by Joris Ivens

A Trip to Paramountown(1922)

20min | Documentary
3.0/5 (with 1 vote)

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

Directed by William Desmond Taylor

Nothing But Time(1926)

46min | Documentary, Drama
3.6/5 (with 8 votes)

The life of a great city (Paris) from dawn until dusk, including the beautiful and the ragged, the rich and the poor, with little or no comment from the director, Cavalcanti.

Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti

Finlandia(1922)

2h 1min | Documentary
1.0/5 (with 1 vote)

A documentary from Erkki Karu, one of the earliest pioneers of Finnish cinema: This government-run propaganda film introduces the nature, sports, military, agriculture and capital of Finland.

Directed by Erkki Karu
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The Epic of Everest(1924)

1h 27min | Documentary
3.5/5 (with 10 votes)

The official record of Mallory and Irvine's 1924 expedition. When George Mallory and Sandy Irvine attempted to reach the summit of Everest in 1924 they came closer than any previous attempt. Inspired by the work of Herbert Ponting (The Great White Silence) Captain Noel filmed in the harshest of conditions, with specially adapted equipment, to capture the drama of the fateful expedition.

Directed by John Baptist Lucius Noel - With Andrew Irvine, George Mallory

The Making of an American(1920)

14min
2.1/5 (with 5 votes)

Docudrama encouraging immigrants to master English and become successful, assimilated Americans.

Directed by Guy Hedlund

The White Stadium(1928)

2h 4min | Documentary
3.8/5 (with 6 votes)

A profile of the 1928 Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Directed by Arnold Fanck, Othmar Gurtner - With Clas Thunberg, David Carnegie, 11th Earl of Northesk, Erich Recknagel, Per-Erik Hedlund, Sonja Henie

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness(1927)

1h 9min | Documentary, Adventure, Drama
3.3/5 (with 8 votes)

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

Directed by Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Jews on the Land(1927)

17min | Documentary
3.3/5 (with 1 vote)

This documentary depicts the creation of collective farms for Jews in Crimea. It shows them building their houses, digging a well, and farming the land.

Directed by Abram Room

Is Your Daughter Safe?(1927)

1h | Drama

The film was created as a compilation of footage that was, in some cases, nearly fifteen years old, and included stock footage such as medical reels containing footage of venereal diseases and films depicting white slavery. The basic plot was a cautionary tale about a young woman's journey into prostitution and white slavery, but, like the other films of the era, the plot was secondary to the sexual content. Many of the presentations were introduced at the front door, with live nude women in glass booths at the entrances. Inside, the films were usually accompanied by a medical slideshow about venereal disease and a lecture from an alleged sexual education specialist. This was a typical presentation template for the time, and set an example for later exploiters. (Wikipedia)

Directed by S. S. Millard

Behind the Clouds the Sun Is Shining(1925)

1h 18min

Educational film about the symptoms, treatment, and prevention of tuberculosis. Mr van den Heuvel, a cobbler, lives with his wife and two small children in a one-room hovel in a dingy alley. He wants to work, but is usually too tired and is continuously coughing. He ignores the advice of his doctor to go to a health centre. His little daughter, Annetje, is not well either. At school she is listless, never wanting to play with her classmates. A visiting school doctor examines the girl and gives her a note for her parents, advising them to consult their doctor. Father considers this as nonsense.

Directed by Willy Mullens

A Sixth Part of the World(1926)

1h 5min | Documentary
3.8/5 (with 10 votes)

Through the travelogue format, it depicts the multitude of Soviet peoples in remote areas of USSR and details the entirety of the wealth of the Soviet land. Focusing on cultural and economic diversity, the film is in fact a call for unification in order to build a "complete socialist society".

Directed by Dziga Vertov

The Einstein Theory of Relativity(1923)

29min | Documentary, Animation
2.8/5 (with 1 vote)

"The Einstein Theory of Relativity" is the short version (587 m) of the lost American long version (1219 m) of Hanns Walter Kornblum's original German feature "Die Grundlagen der Einsteinschen Relativitäts-Theorie" from 1922 that is also lost.

Directed by Max Fleischer, Dave Fleischer

The Battles of the Coronel and Falkland Islands(1927)

1h 46min | Drama, Documentary
3.2/5 (with 4 votes)

The film focuses on the naval warfare around the Battle of Coronel and Battle of the Falkland Islands during the First World War. It was the last in a successful series of documentary reconstructions of First World War battles by British Instructional Films made between 1921 and 1927.

Directed by Walter Summers

Heroes All(1920)

1h 13min | Documentary, War
2.5/5 (with 1 vote)

Films shot by newsreel companies and army cameramen are featured to tell the story of what it was like for soldiers during World War I.

Directed by Anthony Young

Mechanics of the Brain(1926)

1h | Documentary
2.6/5 (with 4 votes)

"Though not given a New York showing until 1935, V. I. Pudovkin's Mechanics of the Brain (Mekhanika Golovnovo Mozga) was written and directed by Pudovkin in 1926. A full year in the making, this scientific documentary concentrates on the behavioral studies conducted by Prof. Ivan Pavlov. The laboratory dogs used in Pavlov's research don't seem too happy about it, and as a result this film might be hard to take for the more sensitive viewers (the vivisection sequence is particularly rough). The progress of the research is detailed with charts and graphs, hardly the "cinematic" touches one might expect from Pudovkin. Interestingly, Mechanics of the Brains was released two years before the results of Pavlov's studies were printed in book form.".

Directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin

The Pottery Maker(1925)

15min | Documentary
3.3/5 (with 1 vote)

A little girl watches the craftsman at work while inter-titles explain the particulars of pottery-making.

Directed by Robert J. Flaherty

The Shanghai Document(1928)

51min | Documentary
2.9/5 (with 2 votes)

The film portrays Shanghai, China in the early 1920s. It shows the contrasts between the world of Western expatriates (including Britons, Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, and Danes) who live in the luxurious Shanghai International Settlement, and that of the Shanghainese inhabitants, who spend their days laboring.

Directed by Yakov Bliokh

Ypres(1925)

1h 45min | War
3.0/5 (with 1 vote)

In 1925, with the cooperation of the War Office, British Instructional Films set out to make a dramatic, feature-length reconstruction of the five Ypres battles in which 1.7 million soldiers lost their lives. Directed by William Summers, the result is a silent classic. Unlike the famous 1916 documentary The Battle of the Somme, the Ypres footage is entirely ”faked” and the film shares some of Somme‘s propagandist approach. Regardless, the film is no less fascinating as an artistic endeavour of its time and it features some stunning images. A degree of authenticity is provided by real soldiers taking part and by the filming having taken place in the actual Ypres trenches.

Directed by Walter Summers

Our Heavenly Bodies(1925)

1h 32min | Documentary, Science Fiction
3.2/5 (with 4 votes)

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.

Directed by Hanns Walter Kornblum, Johannes Meyer, Rudolf Biebrach - With Margarete Schön, Margarete Schlegel, Theodor Loos, Paul Bildt, Oskar Marion, Willy Kaiser-Heyl, ...

St Kilda: Britain's Loneliest Isle(1928)

15min
3.8/5 (with 1 vote)

Travelogue of a sailing from Glasgow to St Kilda (via other Scottish islands) showing life on St Kilda shortly before it was evacuated.

Heroic Deed Among the Ice(1928)

1h 11min

"Heroic Deed Among the Ice" ("Podvig vo I'dah" in Russian) is a 1928 Soviet silent documentary film. It is also known as "Exploit on the Ice" and "Ice-Breaker Kras(s)in". This film is the first collaboration between Georgi Vasilyev and Sergei Vasilyev. It details the mission of the ice-breaker Krasin to rescue the crashed crew of Umberto Nobile's arctic airship Italia. The raw material shot without any plan by cameramen who accompanied Krasin was used by Georgi and Sergei Vasilyev to create a coherent and powerful narrative in the tradition of Soviet montage school. Heroic Deed was released in October 1928 and its success helped Georgi and Sergei Vasilyev to realize their ambition to direct. All the editing notes by Vasilyev survive and have been published, but the film itself is partially lost. The actual ice-breaker Krasin survived and is now a (still fully operational) museum ship St Petersburg.

Directed by Sergei Vasilyev
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Tags: #movies #documentaries #decade #1920
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