Nonfiction motion pictures originally released to theaters in periodic issues, each issue consisting of a number of news stories reporting or commenting on recent events. Typically American newsreels ran for about ten minutes and were issued twice weekly. They were first produced by French filmmakers in the mid-1890s. Their principal years of production in the U.S. ran from 1910 to the 1960s.

Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus

http://vocab.getty.edu/page/aat/300263837