Best Documentary Movies of 1930

With Byrd at the South Pole (1930) is a documentary film about Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd and his 1st quest to the South Pole beginning at the Little America-Exploration Base. The film's soundtrack consists mostly of music and sound effects, with narration read by Floyd Gibbons. The film won at the 3rd Academy Awards for Best Cinematography.

Food is getting scarce for the tribe, and the chief must choose between the advice of Baluk to go north to the caribou herds, or the conniving medicine man Dagwan to stay put. On the way north they endure great hardship, and the conflict between Baluk and Dagwan deepens. It doesn't help that both want to marry the chief's daughter.

Early "shockumentary", apparently shot in Egypt, which documents the habits of opium addicts. The interiors of drug dens are shown, and at the conclusion the film an addict is shown collapsing on a sand dune; the booming voice of the narrator informs us that the addict has perished. Footage used is from the silent film Dope Fiends.

The long log drive: a spring journey down icy streams and rivers moving logs from the forest to the mill for sawing into boards, laths, and clapboards. For more than 150 years, logging techniques remained the same. Men cut trees by hand and loaded them on horse-drawn sleds to be hauled over snow to the river. Skilled river drivers maneuvered the logs downstream, risking their limbs and lives every day. This film survives as a record of the long log business.

A Traveltalk visit to the island nation when it was still a British crown colony and the name Sri Lanka was 40 years in the future.