Need Photo: "Nanook"

This is a silent documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty, released in 1922. Flaherty captured the struggles of the Inuit Nanook and his family.

The film was shot near Inukjuak, on Hudson Bay in arctic Quebec, Canada. It captured an exotic culture in a distant location, rather than a facsimile of reality using actors and props on a studio set. Traditional Inuit methods of hunting, fishing, igloo-building, and other customs were shown with accuracy, and the compelling story of a man and his family struggling against nature met with great success in North America and abroad.

Nanook of the North is considered the first feature-length documentary, though Flaherty has been criticized for staging much of the action and distorting the reality of his subjects' lives.

Fun Facts (from www.imdb.com)

• Rated #6 in 2002 by International Documentary Assn. on its list of Top 20 Documentaries of all time.
• All of the scenes are staged.
• The woman who plays Nanook's wife was not his actual wife.
• Allariallak/Nanook died of starvation in 1922, months after the film was completed.
• The film was sponsored by French fur company Revillon Freres which provided $50,000 for Flaherty's 16-month expedition halfway to the North Pole. Despite being rejected by five distributors, the film opened in New York City in 1922, after its success in Paris and Berlin, and grossed well over $40,000 in its first week.