Best Documentary Movies of 1928

Under the tutelage of anthropologist Franz Boas (her former Columbia professor) and Harlem Renaissance arts patron Charlotte Osgood Mason, Zora Neale Hurston spent nearly two years, from 1927 to 1929, studying the folkloric customs, work songs, spirituals, and vernacular language of African American communities along the River Road and from New Orleans to Florida.

Documentary about a Pole expedition.

Captain Edward A. Salisbury (1875-1962) was a noted millionaire explorer and writer, whose exploration stories of the islands of the South Seas Pacific appeared often in "The National Geographic," and other magazines in the early part of the 20th-century, spent 18 months exploring the New Hebrides islands where head-hunting and cannibalism was practiced by some of the natives...and highly discouraged and frowned-upon the white-governments of their lands. The footage shot by Captain Edward A. Salisbury was put together to make this film. Captain Salisbury explained that 'gow' was the native term for the practice of head-hunting, and was not the name of one of the head-hunters.

Footage from the premiere of Charlie Chaplin's 1928 film 'The Circus'.

This 1920s home movie, shot by longtime Corpus Christi resident Antonio Rodríguez Fuentes, may well represent some of the earliest produced by a Mexican-American filmmaker about the Mexican-American community in Texas. In the footage, Fuentes captures his five children-Ruben, Ophelia, Mercedes, Antonio, and Carmen-on Christmas Day 1928. The children surround the outdoor Christmas tree, playing with the gifts they received.

This 1920s home movie, shot by longtime Corpus Christi resident Antonio Rodríguez Fuentes, may well represent some of the earliest produced by a Mexican-American filmmaker about the Mexican-American community in Texas. The footage first shows Fuentes, his wife Josefina, and four of their children exiting their home. Then, Fuentes steps behind the camera to capture his son Antonio Jr. riding a tricycle.

If this is an expedition through the Amazonian rain forest, there isn't much to it. We get to see the explorers start in the Andes, hire some local Indians as carriers, then it's on to the Jivaro Indians, well known in the days of serial movies and pulp magazines -- i.e., when this was made -- as savages who shrunk their slain enemies' heads and kept them as souvenirs.

Hollywood actresses including Jeanette Loff and Raquel Torres modeling Spring fashions in color.

Documentary on making locomotives.

An early documentary about life above Earth, focusing on the planet's atmosphere and how what we do affects it. Also shown is a young boy learning how to to make a refractive telescope. In the last half of the film, an aircraft takes an imaginary trip to the moon.

Documentary about the city of Santiago

Businessman and adventurer Homer Augustus Brinkley produced this film in 1928 after living for several months among the Seminole Indians in the Everglades. He later used the film in a traveling show that featured a live, caged bear and himself dressed as a Seminole. Photographed by William B. Feeland, the film contains some of the earliest moving footage of the Seminole.