''Drifters'' is a 1929 silent documentary film by
John Grierson
John Grierson (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert J. Flaherty's '' ...
, his first and only "personal" film.
It tells the story of Britain's
North Sea
The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...
herring
Herring are various species of forage fish, belonging to the Order (biology), order Clupeiformes.
Herring often move in large Shoaling and schooling, schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate wate ...
fishery. The film's style has been described as being a "response to avant-garde, Modernist films, adopting formal techniques such as montage – constructive editing emphasising the rhythmic juxtaposition of images – but also aimed to make a socially directed commentary on its subject" (Tate Gallery: Liverpool 2006). The film was successful both critically and commercially and helped kick off Grierson's documentary film movement. This film also showed that Grierson was not afraid to alter reality slightly in order to have his vision shown. For example, when the boat he was on returned without a catch he bought another boat's catch and tried to fake it. He ended up scrapping that film as it was not authentic enough.
[Evans, Gary. John Grierson: ''Trailblazer of Documentary Film''. Montreal: XYZ Publishing, 2005. Print.]
Release
The film was shown alongside ''
Battleship Potemkin
'' Battleship Potemkin'' (, ), sometimes rendered as ''Battleship Potyomkin'', is a 1925 Soviet silent epic film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by Sergei Eisenstein, it presents a dramatization of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 ...
s premiere in London.
See also
* ''
Music for Drifters''
References
Works cited
*
External links
*
1929 films
British documentary films
Black-and-white documentary films
Films directed by John Grierson
1929 documentary films
Films about fishing
British silent feature films
British black-and-white films
1920s British films
Silent British adventure films
1920s English-language films
English-language documentary films
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