Nanook of the North

Nanook of the North is a 1922 silent documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty. In the tradition of what would later be called salvage ethnography, Flaherty captured the struggles of the Inuk Nanook and his family in the Canadian arctic. The film is considered the first feature-length documentary, though Flaherty has been criticized for staging several sequences and thereby distorting the reality of his subjects' lives. In 1989, this film was one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally,... historically, or aesthetically significant". The documentary follows the lives of an Inuit, Nanook, and his family as they travel, search for food, and trade in in northern Quebec, Canada. Nanook, his wife, Nyla, and their baby, Cunayou, are introduced as fearless heroes who endure rigors "no other race" could survive. In 1910, Flaherty was hired as an explorer and prospector along the Hudson Bay for a Canadian railroad company.
more