Nanook Of The North Summary

The film “Nanook of the North” directed by Robert J. Flaherty, is one of the first documentary films shown to mankind. It was a benchmark for future documentaries we see today. The movie describes the fishing, trading, and hunting abilities of an Eskimo group located in the northern region of Canada. There is a particular scene in “Nanook of the north” in which the hunter, Nanook, hunts a seal. Consisting years of hunting experience, Nanook knows that seals must breathe every 20 minutes and in order to accomplish this, the seals must keep an air hole for themselves in the ice. Nanook waits for the seal to come to the breathing hole and manages to harpoon the escaping seal. Then follows a desperate tug of war between man and animal. Nanook

In a documentary sense, truth can be defined as the state of being true or in accordance with facts and reality. As mentioned previously, Flaherty has been criticized for staging several sequences throughout the film which created the illusion to which the audience believes is real and truthful. This illusion was necessary in order to obtain the buildup of narrative structure, which is crucial to the film’s site of image. For example, it has been discovered that walrus hunting was no longer practiced by the Inuit at the time the film was released and it hasn't been for some time. A well-reasoned explanation for this is that Flaherty staged the walrus hunting scene in order to create excitement and produce a climax which was essential for the narrative structure portion of the film. Furthermore, Factual evidence revealed that Nanook was in fact named Allakariallak. The two women in the film, Nyla and Cynayou, were not really Allakriallak's wives. In fact, they were common-law wives of Flaherty himself. This was necessary in order to portray characters which was fundamental in the film’s site of image. Of course, this really makes us question the film's truthfulness and its truth values as a documentary. With the acknowledgement on the facts I just gave, can Flaherty's documentary film “Nanook of the North” really be called truthful? With respect to the

Flaherty's “Nanook of the North” is a black and white documentary film made some between 1920 and 1921. It consisted a duration time of 79 minutes with no talking narrative throughout the whole film. Instead, nondiagetic sound and inter titles were added in order to compensate for the lack of information shared to the audience. There is a particular scene in “Nanook of the North” that that really made me question the film's truth value. The scene consisted of Nanook and his family replicating their everyday actions in an igloo. If one were to step inside an igloo, you would notice total darkness around you. Of course, this would make it very difficult for filming unless some kind of intervention was done. The film revealed its flaws in this scene by showing a very clear and visible footage of the Eskimo group. In order to be able to visibly see Nanook and his family inside the darkening igloo, intervention had to be made. That is, a set of light was purposely constructed inside the igloo in which the family could replicate their interactions in front of the camera. Coming back to the tug of war scene between Nanook and the seal, a duration of over 3 minutes of footage occurred in that scene alone. There was very minimal editing which makes the optimal illusion of reality. If we look carefully, the scene consisted many different shot types to make the audience engage on the environment.