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).