A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries".
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). Founded in 1923 by four brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, the company established itself as a leader in the American film industry before diversifying into animation, television, and video games, and is one of the "Big Five" major American film studios, as well as a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before sound motion pictures became commercially practical. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. Before sound-on-film technology became viable, soundtracks for films were commonly played live with organs or pianos.
The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) from 1922 to 1945. Under Hays's leadership, the MPPDA, later the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), adopted the Production Code in 1930 and began rigidly enforcing it in 1934. The Production Code spelled out acceptable and unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States.
A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, information, and entertainment for millions of moviegoers. Newsreels were typically exhibited preceding a feature film, but there were also dedicated newsreel theaters in many major cities in the 1930s and ’40s, and some large city cinemas also included a smaller theaterette where newsreels were screened continuously throughout the day.
Martin Elmer Johnson and Osa Helen Johnson were married American adventurers and documentary filmmakers. In the first half of the 20th century the couple captured the public's imagination through their films and books of adventure in exotic, faraway lands. Photographers, explorers, marketers, naturalists and authors, Martin and Osa studied the wildlife and peoples of East and Central Africa, the South Pacific Islands and British North Borneo. They explored then-unknown lands and brought back film footage and photographs, offering many Americans their first understanding of these distant lands.
Stephen Goosson was an American film set designer and art director.
Lowell Jackson Thomas was an American writer, broadcaster, and traveler, best remembered for publicising T. E. Lawrence. He was also involved in promoting the Cinerama widescreen system. In 1954, he led a group of New York City-based investors to buy majority control of Hudson Valley Broadcasting, which, in 1957, became Capital Cities Television Corporation.
Pathé is a French major film production and distribution company, owning a number of cinema chains through its subsidiary Pathé Cinémas and television networks across Europe.
Sir George Hubert Wilkins MC & Bar, commonly referred to as Captain Wilkins, was an Australian polar explorer, ornithologist, pilot, soldier, geographer and photographer. He was awarded the Military Cross after he assumed command of a group of American soldiers who had lost their officers during the Battle of the Hindenburg Line, and became the only official Australian photographer from any war to receive a combat medal. He narrowly failed in an attempt to be the first to cross under the North Pole in a submarine, but was able to prove that submarines were capable of operating beneath the polar ice cap, thereby paving the way for future successful missions. The US Navy later took his ashes to the North Pole aboard the submarine USS Skate on 17 March 1959.
A stag film is a type of pornographic film produced secretly in the first two-thirds of the 20th century. Typically, stag films had certain traits. They were brief in duration, were silent, depicted hardcore pornography and were produced clandestinely due to censorship laws. Stag films were screened for all-male audiences in fraternities or similar locations; observers offered a raucous collective response to the film, exchanging sexual banter and achieving sexual arousal. Stag films were often screened in brothels.
Ingagi is a 1930 pre-Code pseudo-documentary exploitation film directed by William S. Campbell. It purports to be a documentary about "Sir Hubert Winstead" of London on an expedition to the Belgian Congo, and depicts a tribe of gorilla-worshipping women encountered by the explorer. The film claims to show a ritual in which African women are given over to gorillas as sex slaves, but in actuality was mostly filmed in Los Angeles, using American actresses in place of natives. It was produced and distributed by Nat Spitzer's Congo Pictures, which had been formed expressly for this production. Although marketed under the pretense of being ethnographic, the premise was a fabrication, leading the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association to retract any involvement.
Armand Georges Denis was a Belgian-born documentary filmmaker. After several decades of pioneering work in filming and presenting the ethnology and wildlife of remote parts of Africa and Asia, he became best known in Britain as the director and co-presenter of natural history programmes on television in the 1950s and 1960s, with his second wife Michaela.
"Goona-goona epic" refers to a particular type of native-culture exploitation film set in remote parts of the Far East, Southeast Asia, Africa, South America, and the South Pacific. These include documentaries and dramas, both of which rely heavily on travelogue and stock footage scenes of semi-nude native peoples performing exotic rituals and customs.
The National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI) was an American film industry self-regulatory body created by the Hollywood studios in 1916 to answer demands for film censorship by states and municipalities.
This is a list of reference works on documentary films.
The Columbia Theatre was an American burlesque theater on Seventh Avenue at the north end of Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Operated by the Columbia Amusement Company between 1910 and 1927, it specialized in "clean", family-oriented burlesque, similar to vaudeville. Many stars of the legitimate theater or of films were discovered at the Columbia. With loss of audiences to cinema and stock burlesque, the owners began to offer slightly more risqué material from 1925. The theater was closed in 1927, renovated and reopened in 1930 as a cinema called the Mayfair Theatre. It went through various subsequent changes and was later renamed the DeMille Theatre. Nothing is left of the theater.
The Lost Zeppelin is a 1929 sound adventure film directed by Edward Sloman and produced and distributed by Tiffany-Stahl. The film stars Conway Tearle, Virginia Valli and Ricardo Cortez.
Walter Futter was a film producer and director in the United States. After an initial career cutting and editing films, Futter began writing and producing his own shorts and movies, often using footage he acquired. He had success with Africa Speaks!, a popular movie, which combined Paul L. Hoefler's footage filmed in the field, staged scenes filmed in Los Angeles, and narration by Lowell Thomas. He produced more than 250 short films, including series of shorts entitled Walter Futter's Traveloques and Walter Futter's Curiosities. Hoot Gibson starred in a number of his western films. Another of his more than 50 longer films was Jericho, also called Dark Sands.
Paul Louis Hoefler (1893–1982) was a photographer, reporter and cinematographer who filmed wildlife and tribal scenes in Africa that were used in the popular documentary film Africa Speaks! produced by Walter Futter.
