Loading
Robert Flaherty, 1922, financed by the fur house Revillon Frères and released by Pathé, shot on Hudson Bay with Inuit families. Allakariallak, billed as Nanook, hunts, builds, and travels with Nyla and the children. Flaherty restaged the walrus hunt and built an igloo with one wall removed so the camera could have light. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 1989. The film that taught distributors to sell nonfiction as a feature; the contract with reality is already the subject.
In two programmes
The camera is a guest. Flaherty spends a year with a family on Hudson Bay, restages the walrus hunt, and cuts an igloo in half for light. The seal pulled out of the ice is the scene: real cold, real work, and a hunter who knows exactly where the lens is.
The Arctic as spectacle, with a fur house paying the bills. Flaherty restaged the walrus hunt and cut an igloo in half for light, and the cold in the frame is real. The cost is the question the film keeps raising about itself: what was arranged, and who got credited.
Cast & crew
Further reading
Also streaming
Loading films
