LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Robert J. Flaherty: Nanook Flaherty
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There is an astonishing sequence in Robert J. Flaherty's "Nanook of the North" (1922) in which his hero, the Inuit hunter Nanook, hunts a seal. Flaherty shows the most exciting passage in one unbroken shot. Nanook knows that seals must breathe every 20 minutes, and keep an air hole open for themselves in the ice of the Arctic winter. He finds such a hole, barely big enough to be seen and is poised motionless above it with his harpoon until a seal rises to breathe. Then he strikes and holds onto the line as the seal plunges to escape.
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Movie audiences have seen little of the Canadian Arctic native people since 1922, when Robert J. Flaherty introduced NANOOK OF THE NORTH to the rest of the world. So this strange and often thrilling three-hour film is a welcome event: Not only is it a reintroduction to a fascinating culture that has survived 4,000 years in a remote and most inhospitable climate, but it's ... the first film ever directed by an Inuit filmmaker and featuring an all-Inuit cast. read more
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Robert Flaherty (16.02.1884—23.07.1951) is an American director who takes a special place in documentary filmmaking of the XX century. He didn't create his own school, but he started a new turn in the world of documentaries films. In his most famous film, Nanook of the North (1922), Flaherty used ethnographic stuff as the basis to create a profound and ultimate masterwork. He did not separate cinematography form reality. His camera was always a participator in the real life events. His method was to penetrate deep into life.
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Robert Flaherty is, without any question, one of the most important and influential figures in documentary history. Documentary works had been around since the birth of cinema and had even found popularity with a mass audience. The early 'Actualities' provided glimpses into the working lives of ordinary people and industrial processes, major events were recorded by the likes of Thomas Edison, and voyages of exploration were filmed in captivating detail by the likes of Herbert Ponting. Nanook of the North, Flaherty's first film, was nonetheless something new, a study of an Inuit (or Eskimo) family that engaged fully with its characters, that was presented with humour and insight, had sequences that were genuinely exciting, and had a clear and structured narrative. To a 1920s audience this must have been revolutionary, captivating stuff, providing an insight into a society radically different from anything in their own experience in a world with no television or internet or even glossy magazines. The average audience of the time would be seeing here something that they had simply never encountered before, presented in a way that was as enthralling as any contemporary fiction film.
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Robert and Frances Flaherty: A Documentary Life encompasses a major, scholarly effort as it thoroughly explores the life and career of Robert and Frances Flaherty and the connection between Far North and early cinema. This book contains the most recent efforts to reassess Flaherty's biography. Robert Christopher draws from, and reflects on, the unpublished diaries of Robert and Frances Flaherty, in order to provide a more detailed biography. This text is unique in its approach to Robert Flaherty's achievements as it directly connects them to the influence of his wife, Frances Flaherty. It emphasizes her immense contributions to Flaherty's artistic growth in what Christopher calls, "their remarkable and often turbulent artistic partnership." Christopher inverts the conventions of previous biographical approaches by emphasizing Flaherty�s career before the release of Nanook, rather then disregarding it as insignificant. In the words of its author, this work "seeks not only to rectify the typical approach to the Flaherty biography but ... to address the forty-year hiatus in biographical studies of Robert and Frances."
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[M]uch for the pioneer documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty ("Moana"/"Louisiana Story"), known as "the father of the documentary" for his groundbreaking 1922 Nanook of the North, being a purist, as much of Man of Aran was staged for the cameras. The talented showman, lyrical photographer and mythmaker had no reluctance to place the Aran fishermen in a rehearsed mise en scéne of a struggle with the natural elements to get the desirous results of romantic heroism (celebrating man's resiliency to survive in such harsh conditions). It was filmed for two and a half years on the barren island of Aran that's some 30 miles off the western coast of Ireland, in Galway Bay, with the actual natives. With little dialogue (and that dubbed into English rather than keeping the native Gaelic) and little interaction amongst the people, we hardly get to know the people of Aran, as the story features Colman "Tiger" King as the gritty fisherman, Maggie Dirrane as his wife, and Michael Dillane as his young son. The plot centers around the peasant natives' hardship to survive in their birthplace, as they gather food. To get their staple food of potatoes in a place with little natural soil they produce their own soil by breaking rocks. The fishing is shown to be a dangerous experience, as they are at the mercy of wicked weather and turbulent seas that can smash their boats to pieces and rip up their nets.
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Nanook Flaherty