Best Documentary Movies of 1933

James Mack, a reporter for the International News Bureau, is assigned by his editor to do a story on the phenomenon of nudist colonies.

Shot by Methodist missionaries, this is an incredibly charming record of small-town life in an unidentified location in China. We see a bustling wharf town with canal-side dwellings, distinctive school buildings, and a hospital where newly graduated nurses pose for a group portrait. The relaxed smiles of Chinese and Europeans are captured in intimate close-ups, suggesting a tight-knit community.

Plotless musical revue celebrating President Franklin D. Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration.

"All at Sea" is a short documentary of Cooke, Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard all on Chaplin's yacht on an afternoon sail.

The film explores the story of the Bounty and is based on the 1932 novel Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall.

Hailed by John Grierson as 'one of the best descriptions of life in the country anybody has yet made', the film follows a young couple torn between the choice of emigration to Australia or remaining to work their croft in Shetland.

Pioneer filmmaker J. Stuart Blackton was intrigued by the idea of a film about the history of the movies as early as 1915. He finally released a 52-minute feature called The Film Parade that was shown in New York and favorably reviewed by "Variety" in 1933. He continued tinkering with the film for the rest of the decade, and later filmmakers and distributors used Blackton's footage for stock or to produce their own variously titled and truncated versions. -UCLA Film & Television Archive

Krakatoa is a 1933 American Pre-Code short documentary film produced by Joe Rock. The story describes how the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa on the island blew half of the large island into the air that produced a tsunami, and an air wave that was felt seven times around the globe. The eruption also emitted tons of dust that dimmed the sun all over the world for many months. It won the Academy Award in 1934 for Best Short Subject (Novelty).

Producer Samuel Cummins, along with five participants in World War I, discuss the key events of the war as illustrated by an assemblage of battlefield and other documentary footage. This film is not the same as, but seems likely to have either inspired or been inspired by, Norman Lee's British production of the same title (q.v.), apparently released the following year.

A short GPO documentary showing how undersea telephone cables are repaired.

One of the short little films featuring Don Aspiazu of his own orchestra, a good example of the style of Cubano jazz in the 1920's and 1930's, combined with some sporadic, picturesque images of contemporary Cuba.

The story of Russian director Sergei M. Eisenstein in Mexico trying to film his unfinished ¡Que Viva Mexico! - Da zdravstvuyet Meksika! (1979).

A film made by the British General Post Office (GPO) in 1933, promoting the automation of telephone exchanges.

Highlights the fast-paced and dangerous world of professional auto racing.

Blood and Soil (German: Blut und Boden) refers to the ideology focussing on a concept of ethnicity based on descent (Blood) and homeland (Soil). It celebrates the relationship of a people to the land that they occupy and cultivate and places high esteem on the virtues of the bucolic (as opposed to urban) living. From this propaganda film, we learn, how hard it is to be a peasant when liberals rule the state. A family of peasants is forced to sell their property and run away to a big city, where they are forced to live in the poverty. Thankfully when the Nazis take power, they may finally come back and live a happy life. Besides the main plot, there is also educational elements here: Germans are informed how few of them will remain in 2050 year if they don't start a mass reproduction.

This short follows two duck hunters in the Sacramento River Valley.

Highlights include China's Pearl River, Temple of 500 Buddhas and Siam's palaces.

The fourth and final game in the 1933 playoffs for the Stanley Cup played at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The match, between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers, is described by the well-known sports commentator Foster Hewitt. Hewitt also interviews the players and coaches of both teams in their respective dressing rooms. Scoreless at the end of regulation time, the game goes into overtime: now the first goal scored will decide the game. The Rangers score to take the Cup.

Another FitzPatrick TravelTalk, taking us to the titular islands.

A documentary of explorer Richard Halliburton's travels on the Indian sub-continent, featuring a mix of real and staged footage.

A Hearst Metrotone prohibition newsreel.

A documentary that tries to explain nudism.

Mussolini Speaks is a 1933 documentary film highlighting the first 10 years of Benito Mussolini’s rule as Prime Minister of Italy. The film, narrated by U.S. radio broadcaster Lowell Thomas, includes footage of the Fascists’ March on Rome, the Lateran Treaty between Italy and The Holy See, engineering projects in Italy and North Africa, and excerpts of speeches by Mussolini.

This Traveltalk series short visits Papua and Kalabahai.

Willy Zielke was a brilliant photographer and filmmaker from ?od? who suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis: His German feature films of the 1930s, Arbeitslos and Das Stahltier, were banned; Leni Riefenstahl made use of him to conceive, direct, and shoot the prologue for Olympia, but gave him no credit; and later, in a mentally incapacitated state, he was confined to an insane asylum where he was forcibly sterilized, only to be released after five years in 1942 so that Riefenstahl could make use of him once again on the final shooting of Tiefland. Zielke’s 1933 film Arbeitslos, commissioned by a Maffei railway company unemployment shelter, presented a despairing portrait of a nation in near-total collapse.

A documentary almanac about the life of the Soviet capital during the period of the extensive construction of socialism. The film shows the transformation of the external appearance of Moscow, the construction of new avenues, metro lines, residential buildings for workers, and the formation of a new way of life for a worker. There are also shots in the film that depict the leaders of the working proletariat: vols. I. Stalin, S. Kirov, S. Ordzhonikidze and others.

The Sea [Morze] is a 1933 Polish short documentary film directed by Wanda Jakubowska. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1933 for Best Short Subject (Novelty).

A document of the 1932 national hunger march on Washington produced by the Workers Film and Photo League.

Animal life in the American desert is depicted with an emphasis on the battles between various combatants in the struggle to either eat or be eaten.