For three hundred years we have had our focus on the individual. We have distinguished him from the objective world as the Middle Ages did not think of doing. We have given him the world and the universe as a playground for exploration and discovery.

It premiered in a private film club in London in November 1929 on a double-bill with Eisenstein's then controversial film The Battleship Potemkin (which was banned from general release in Britain until 1954) and received high praise from both its sponsors and the press. In Grierson's view a way to counter these problems was to involve citizens in their government with the kind of engaging excitement generated by the popular press which simplified and dramatized public affair. Brian Salt 1938)
They Made the Land (dir.

In 1926 Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert Flaherty's Moana. John Grierson (26 April 1898 – 19 February 1972) was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film.