Although the best known chapter of the WFPL was in New York, groups in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities created and screened documentaries under the "Film and Photo League" moniker.
Nationally, the Film & Photo Leagues emerged as a loosely knit alliance of local organizations that provided leftist visual propaganda.
Their efforts during the years of the early Depression helped to define social documentary film and photography as a genre.
They were largely composed of idealists who saw the documentary film as a vital element of the movement for radical social change.
Some filmmakers formed an independent private production company, others founded Nykino and some, later, the Frontier Film Group.