John Grierson's documentary - he is credited onscreen with the camerawork, but he surely had a hand in more - is about a voyage of the trawler Isabella Greig. It's a study that is largely a work of,silent film making, showing the men, the ship, the fish and the seagulls that follow the ship and feed off the offal thrown off the ship as they clean the fish.
I don't know if there is a full-scale biography of Grierson, but there should be. He wrote several books himself. He created the term "documentary" in writing about Robert Flaherty's movies. He helped bring Eisenstein's BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN to the English-speaking world. He worked for the GPO's film unit during its early documentary days, and became the first Commissioner of Canada's National Film Board in 1939, and stayed with the Board, in one form or another, through the end of the War. Afterwards he drifted through the industry as an elder statesman, with posts at UNESCO and Group Three and taught film courses at McGill University. He died in 1972 at the age of 73.
I don't know if there is a full-scale biography of Grierson, but there should be. He wrote several books himself. He created the term "documentary" in writing about Robert Flaherty's movies. He helped bring Eisenstein's BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN to the English-speaking world. He worked for the GPO's film unit during its early documentary days, and became the first Commissioner of Canada's National Film Board in 1939, and stayed with the Board, in one form or another, through the end of the War. Afterwards he drifted through the industry as an elder statesman, with posts at UNESCO and Group Three and taught film courses at McGill University. He died in 1972 at the age of 73.
