Watched Nanook of the North last night. Shot in 1922, it's one of the first ever feature length documentaries, certainly the most successful of such. Fascinating film, all about an eskimo hunter and his family in Arctic Canada. Yes, I know some of it was staged and he normally used a gun and his 'wife' was actually the common law wife of the Director, Robert Flaherty (!) and so on and so on. But hell, it's a great film shot in extreme conditions and hats off to him. Incidentally, Frank Zappa dreamed he was Nanook in his song Don't Eat the Yellow Snow. And while we're about it, Flaherty made a similarly successful documentary, Man of Aran, in 1934 which somehow became the subject of a recent British Sea Power album. All this is pretty removed from my current whereabouts...
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Nanook of the North
Watched Nanook of the North last night. Shot in 1922, it's one of the first ever feature length documentaries, certainly the most successful of such. Fascinating film, all about an eskimo hunter and his family in Arctic Canada. Yes, I know some of it was staged and he normally used a gun and his 'wife' was actually the common law wife of the Director, Robert Flaherty (!) and so on and so on. But hell, it's a great film shot in extreme conditions and hats off to him. Incidentally, Frank Zappa dreamed he was Nanook in his song Don't Eat the Yellow Snow. And while we're about it, Flaherty made a similarly successful documentary, Man of Aran, in 1934 which somehow became the subject of a recent British Sea Power album. All this is pretty removed from my current whereabouts...
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now's the time to read "The Long Exile", which is about the terrible events that happened to some of the people in the film.
ReplyDeleteI thought there might be a connection, and yes, it's next on the list!
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