Moving Images, Understanding Media

210 Moving Images: Making Movies, Understanding Media

By 1914, Flaherty was also fi lming the sites and activities of the Inuit

people. From many hours of footage, he edited a completed project, Th e

Eskimo, in 1916. Th is fi lm was destroyed by fi re in 1917. Despite this apparent

setback, Flaherty felt that he had learned from the mistakes he had made in

creating this motion picture (including holding a lighted cigarette near the

fi lm negative), and he wanted to return to the Arctic to create a fi lm that

would tell the story of Inuit customs and lifestyles.

Aft er a long struggle, Flaherty was able to secure fi nancing for the project.

He traveled north for two months to reach the eastern coast of the Hudson

Bay where he would work for nearly a year and a half. He proceeded to select

the people that suited his plans and who would become an integral part of the

making of the fi lm. He already knew the man who would be his main character,

“Nanook of the North.” Allakariallak had been a traveling companion during

his previous treks north and would serve as a charismatic center to his fi lm.

Flaherty cast the people who would play the members of Nanook’s family,

and they began to shoot footage of traditional Inuit family life.

Subjects and Participants

Flaherty wanted to depict the nearly extinct craft s and survival methods of this

culture, so he set out to photograph a family engaging in a variety of pursuits

over the course of a year. Having surveyed his own earlier fi lm and other

travelogues, he felt that he needed dramatic elements to engage the viewer,

so he organized the shooting around a series of events and movements that

would give a structure to the feature fi lm. As the fi lm progressed through

examples of daily life, viewers would witness the struggles and joys of an

Inuit family during the course of a motion picture.

Figure 6-2 Mother and child

from Nanook of the North.

(Courtesy Pathé/Photofest)

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