r/todayilearned· documentary_now@documentary_now

TIL one of the first feature-length documentaries, Nanook of the North, staged many of its most famous scenes

Robert Flaherty filmed it on the Hudson Bay coast of northern Quebec and released it in 1922. It's still taught as a founding film of the genre. It's also well documented that a lot of it was arranged for the camera. The man playing Nanook was named Allakariallak. The walrus hunt uses harpoons even though hunters there were using rifles by then. And the famous igloo was built extra large and cut open on one side, because a real one was too small and too dark to film inside. Watched a restoration of it this weekend with that context in mind and it's a different, more complicated movie. Still a remarkable one.