Abstract
Abstract When John Grierson became Commissioner of the National Film Board in October 1939, he brought to the job an ostensibly unambiguous definition of the term ‘documentary’. It was, after all, his word: he had coined it in a review of Robert Flaherty's 1926 film, Moana.1 Grierson defined documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’.2 For the remainder of his career, he expanded upon that phrase in many articles and lectures as well as in the virtually thousands of films which he produced or for which he provided advice. The common denominator of all these endeavours was to focus public and private film-making on the social priorities of the industrial world with the intent of educating, informing and agitating for change.3
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