Best Documentary Movies of 1912

An Otter Study is a 1912 British short black-and-white silent documentary film, produced by Kineto, featuring an otter in its natural habitat, including groundbreaking footage of underwater hunting scenes. The film provided a novel treatment of the creature, which had previously appeared on film only as the victim of hunt films, with the unique underwater footage, shot by a cameraman behind glass in a tank concealed on the bed of the river in the opening scene, and a concluding scene, excised from the surviving print, in which it escapes the hunters. It was long thought lost until footage from a 1920s Visual Education re-release of the film, re-edited under the supervision of Professor J Arthur Thomson of Aberdeen University's Natural History Department, was rediscovered.

A tour of the "ethno-geographical" and "zoological gardens" in Hamburg, Germany, which weaved the global ideas of the end of the century 19th century World's Fair.

Scorpions are among the creepier land animals, and this nature short from Eclair lets its audience see that for themselves, with their scuttling gait, their choice of habitats -- it looks like a dry sand pit, somewhere, according to the Dutch titles I saw on the print -- and their charming custom of going up to a mouse a hundred times their size, jabbing it, walking away, and then an hour later, the mouse is twitching and dying, poisoned.

I don't know how salamanders got the reputation of living in fire. but there are no flames to be seen in the 1912 science short about the critters. They live beneath rotting logs and in the water, which is as far from far as you can get and be a cold-blooded animal.

The Dytiscus is a species of the water beetle and they are abundant in stagnant water. The pictures give an unusually accurate idea of the development of this carnivorous insect. These scientific subjects are difficult to make, owing to the details necessary and this particular film contains a struggle between a Tripon which has been caught in the jaws of the Dytiscus for which the camera man had to wait a number of days before the exact situations desired could be secured.

Newsreel. A festive procession in Vienna with representatives of the Austro-Hungarian lands.

An educational picture of unusual interest showing the entire process of cocoanut raising.

Actuality set on a sheep ranch and released as a split reel along with the comedy Mabel's Adventures.

Black and white silent film. A Buffalo Bill & Pawnee Bill Film Company production. This film was a different production from the Paul Panzer vehicle, The Life of Buffalo Bill (also 1912).

Delhi Durbar and Coronation of King George V & Queen Mary.

Recordings of the Pescara river in Italy, from the mountains to the sea.

The Great Western Railway-sponsored tour of Cornwall, visiting Saltash, Looe, Polperro, Newquay, Truro, Falmouth, The Lizard, Penzance and St Ives, provides an amazing visual record of a long-gone era.