Robert J. Flaherty
Robert J. FLAHERTY (1884-1951, USA) was a writer and filmmaker, who is often referred to as the father of documentary film. He grew up in Canada, where he explored and photographed vast regions of the country’s northern territory. Nanook of the North (1922) was his first film, known as one of the best silent-era documentaries, and it became an international success, setting the standard for non-fiction filmmaking in the documentary movement of the 1930s. John Grierson, the founder of that movement, first used the term “documentary” with regard to Flaherty’s second film Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926). Flaherty continued making this series of films on the same theme of humanity against the elements, employing the same rhetorical devices of the dangers of nature and the struggle of the communities to eke out an existence. In the 1930s and 1940s, his most famous films were Tabu (1931), co-directed with the German director F.W. Murnau, Industrial Britain (1932), made with John Grierson, Man of Aran (1934), The Land (1942) and Louisiana Story (1948).
Filmography
(selection) (all doc) Nanook of the North (1922), The Pottery Maker (1925, short), Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926), The Twenty-Four Dollar Island (1927, short), Industrial Britain (1931, co-dir), Art of the English Craftsman (1933, short), The English Potter (1933, short), Man of Aran (1934), Elephant Boy (1937, co-dir), The Land (1942), Louisiana Story (1948), The Titan: Story of Michelangelo (1950, co-dir)
More info: Wikipedia, Robert J. Flaherty
Robert J. Flaherty at IFFR
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Moana with Sound
Daring musique concrète version of Robert Flaherty’s 1926 docu-fiction masterpiece, created a half-century later by his daughter Monica.