The other night as I was searching “how to build an igloo” (despite Portland being the #1 worst place for igloo makin’…) I stumbled upon Robert Flaherty’s documentary Nanook of the North which I had long forgotten about. I was thrilled to see that the full length film was available online and ended up watching it twice in a row with a bowl of soup and a lot of a “ooohs”.
The documentary was filmed from 1920-1921 in Port Harrison, Northern Quebec. This was the first successful documentary ever made, and was a true benchmark for ethnographic film. Since nothing like this had been done before Flaherty was accused of staging events, which was the norm in filmmaking at that time. Despite the flack, he delivered an entirely unknown culture to the western world and remains the the oldest surviving movie footage of an Inuit constructing an igloo.
Viewer beware: Two awful commercial breaks within. Read More...































