Significance of Robert Flaherty

Widely regarded as the inventor of documentary cinema, Robert Flaherty approached filmmaking with an explorers not a filmmakers eye. Generating ideas 'in the field', he would shoot a vast footage, in his own words, photographing what the camera wanted him to photograph and create ideas and material from this. Flaherty is credited with eight films, all distinguished by an instinct for finding lyrical images. He made three of them during his eight-year stay in Britain during the 1930s.

His first film, 'Nanook of the North'(1922), a dramatic interpretation of the Eskimo way of life, was based on 16 months of living with them and filming their lives. His film was an international success, and its subjective presentation of reality set a model of excellence for nonfiction filmmaking, foreshadowing the documentary movement of the 1930s. John Grierson the founder of the movement, first used the term documentary in a reference to Flaherty’s film, 'Moana' (1926), set in the South Seas, a record of a people untouched by the corruption of civilization.

As a restless, intelligent boy in Michigan, Flaherty spent little time in school and more time living a nomadic, frontier life with his father, a mining engineer. Prospecting for gold and iron ore from camp to camp in Canada, the young Flaherty learned how to survive in the wilderness from the miners and the local Inuit. In the midst of this exploration, he discovered his future wife and lifelong collaborator Frances J. Hubbard during a brief sojourn at the Michigan College of Mines. Finally after a second treacherous expedition to the Hudson Bay area he bought a Bell and Howell 16mm camera and took a three-week course in photography from the Eastman Company in order to simply make a visual record of the fascinating lives and customs he witnessed in the frozen, desolate Canadian North.

Fully immersing himself in their lives and involving the subjects in the filmmaking process, Flaherty created a unique documentary form which seen from today's vantage as the concept of “documentary” is continually widened and challenged. Flaherty's fearless ventures into the unknown were exhilarating turning points which ultimately opened the door to endless possibilities in the worlds of both fictional and real life film making.