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The Shift In Convention Of Realism In Film Nanook Of The North

1834 Words8 Pages

The Shift in Convention of Realism in Documentary

Sarada One (ONE13403079)

Introduction

This essay studies how the convention of realism in documentary has diversified from the emergence of documentary to the online video blog today. As the production technology develops, the way documentary captures, represents or approaches to reality has changed and now the notion, realism, has various aspects and interpretations. The emergence of modern information technologies such as television, the Internet, social media and convenient and affordable recording devices is a key feature. New technologies occurs with the times and the creators have established their own style of making documentary. It is represented in several documentary theories. …show more content…

As Grant and Hillier (2009, p145) writes ‘with Nanook, he (the director Robert Flaherty) went beyond most travelogues of the period,… to create a compelling story of the harsh life of the Inuit … by focusing on individual characters, the hunter Nanook and his family.’ This method of making a documentary shows a comparison to Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. Vertov’s method of recording reality in the film does not focus on an object, for example a specific person or event. The film is shot in three different cities in Soviet and his camera ‘look(s) anywhere and everywhere’ to illustrate the lives of ordinary Soviet labours (Grant and Hillier, 2009, p135). On the other hand, Nichols (1995) points out the emergence of movie stars in the 1920s and he indicates Nanook is the first documentary star. He continues that Nanook’s flight against the nature in Canada is the documentary version of a classic Hollywood type fairy tale. However, Vertov considers a story opposes to, or it prevents representing reality. In the film, Vertov says Man with a Movie Camera is ‘an experiment in cinematic communication of real events ... without the help of a story’. For Flaherty, recording the real lives and telling the story do not conflict (Nichols, 1995). To quote Grant and Hillier (2009, p146), ‘Flaherty did not hesitate to manipulate events for the purpose of dramatisation’ and he ‘projected his romantic vision onto his subjects’. Therefore, Nanook of the North has a lot of Flaherty’s direction and most of the events in the film are set up. However, Nichols points out that the film has extraordinary persuasiveness. It could be because Flaherty tries to be faithful to the originals (Brigard, 1975). For Flaherty, the realism could be archived with and through telling a story. In Flaherty’s point of view,

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