Nanook of the North

Nanook of the North, documentary motion picture about the daily life of an Inuit family who lived on the shores of Canada’s Hudson Bay in the 1920s. Released in 1922, this innovative documentary was made by Robert Flaherty. Flaherty spent two years collecting footage for this movie, which follows an Inuit man named Nanook as he hunts, builds a shelter, and struggles to survive in the harsh northern climate. Before Flaherty made this movie, nonfiction motion pictures often took the form of travelogues that looked on foreign lands and peoples from a great distance. By focussing on the life of one family, Flaherty got closer to his subjects and captured a way of life that no longer exists. He was the first to add a narrative story line to a documentary, a technique that filmmakers have used frequently ever since. Because some of the movie’s sequences were staged, critics question how accurately it represented the lifestyle of the Inuit people.

Director

• Robert Flaherty

Awards

• Selected for Registry by the National Film Preservation Board (1989)

Trivia

• Nanook died of starvation a few years after Flaherty shot this film.