Nanook of the North is considered the first important documentary and among the most influential films in the formative years of cinema. It is possibly the first film about man and his relationship to nature and the first ethnographic film. An archetypal portrayal of man and his struggle to survive, it is itself an archetype of documentary filmmaking.

In the years after WWI the arts were undergoing radical changes. Traditional forms gave way to experimentation and new techniques. Artists were increasingly influenced by different art forms. Film, as it was new and dynamic, was a particularly open medium. Modern poetry had a strong impact on montage film theories, which in turn inspired further developments in literature. Painters, already greatly changing their approach, in part as reaction to still photography, saw moving imagery as a new canvass to explore composition in motion. Imagist films began to appear. Berlin, Symphony of the City is generally considered the first and clearest example of the influence of painting on film.

With her friends and colleagues Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, Esfir Shub stands at the center of early Soviet filmmaking. Like Vertov, she believed in film’s ability to reveal aspects of reality invisible to the naked eye. Like Eisenstein, to whom she taught editing and montage, she understood the power of juxtaposed imagery to create reality. It is arguable that her influence on the cinema runs deeper than either of her more celebrated contemporaries. In her masterpiece The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty she essentially invents the genre of historical compilation film and the formulas and techniques used to this day.

Dziga Vertov is one of the founding figures of Soviet cinema. The Man with the Movie Camera, his Futurist manifesto, is among the most influential films ever made. What starts as a documentary on the role of the cameraman in Soviet society becomes a meta-film exploring the nature of film truth and celebrating the power of the camera as machine.

Night Mail is among the most important and well-known films of the British documentary film movement. Intended as a purely informational document describing how mail is delivered, the film celebrates the skill and importance of workers and explores the interaction of industrialized modernism, traditional rural life, and man’s place between the two.

Fires Were Started – among the greatest anti-war war propaganda films – focuses on the day in the life of an Auxiliary Fire Service crew during the air blitz on London. Commissioned by the Crown Film Unit to celebrate the heroism and personal sacrifice required of Britons to defeat the enemy, Humphrey Jennings instead created a powerful affirmation of humanity and human dignity without chauvinism or patriotic zeal.

Desert Victory is among the finest examples of wartime action documentary. Unlike the films of Humphrey Jennings, whose work focused on civilians at home trying to cope with the realities of war as they experienced them, Desert Victory goes with the troops and captures in real-time the horrors and drama of war. Never before had battle been so thoroughly documented by the camera.

Majdanek operated as a Nazi forced labor and death camp in Poland from 1941-44. At least 250,000 people, mostly Jews, Polish political prisoners, and Soviet prisoners, died or were killed there. In July 1944, it was the first Nazi concentration camp encountered by the Allies when it was liberated by the Red Army.

Film as poetry has been part of film since the creation of moving pictures. Prewar filmmakers had discovered the poetic power of montage techniques and has begun to explore the parallels between sight/sound associations in film and word/image association in written poetry. Explorations into the possibilities of film as poetic language intensified after WWII – not only had techniques and technology improved (particularly in sound synchronization) – but documentary filmmakers increasingly saw the power inherent in film to evoke emotions and ideas and explore the human condition. Coupled with this was an emphasis among many filmmakers on both sides of the Cold War divide that documentary film had an obligation to confront social issues.

Jean Rouch is generally considered the father of the cinema verite movement. Trained as an ethnographer, he saw the camera as the best way to record the reality of the lives of a subject close to his heart, West African tribesmen. However, his first film attempts were criticized as being naïve and bordering on condescending. Rouch was stung by the criticism and set out to go deeper into the lives of his subjects.

Chris Marker is among the most innovative and highly regarded experimental creators in film. A key figure of the cinéma vérité movement, his work since the 1950s has consistently redefined the possibilities of documentary film and video.

The Sorrow and the Pity is Marcel Ophüls' epic account of French society under German occupation during WWII. Combining extensive archival footage with interviews with a wide range of people – from former Vichy collaborationist officials to Resistance leaders, to farmers, actors, shopkeepers, writers, and German veterans – Ophüls explores the psychology of collaboration and its impact on French society a generation after the war. Made for French Television but refused because it was deemed too controversial, it shattered the myth of a unified French resistance against the Occupation and shocked French society with its nonchalant revelations of the extent to which Frenchmen collaborated with the Nazis.
It has been hailed as one of the most moving and influential documentaries of all time.