THE EARLY DOCUMENTARY CAPTURING LIFE AS IT “REALLY IS”

THE LUMIÉRE BROTHERS The Lumiere Brothers were arguably the first to make “documentary“ films (although they called them “actualites”). After inventing their Cinematographe, the Lumiere Bros hired and trained a set of operators that traveled the globe, introducing the new invention, and igniting the imaginations of all its potential buyers. These operators did demonstrations in which they filmed some event in each location, developed the film and then presented it for the crowd/royal family/etc. The Lumiere Broths compiled these short films (there were over 750 in the collection) and showed them in local theatres, homes, and offices. The most famous of these was and continues to be “A Train Arrives” (1895)

“NANOOK OF THE NORTH” AND THE BIRTH OF THE DOCUMENTARY The spread of film wet audiences’ appetite for more unique/interesting experiences. Shortly after narrative films took the stage, there was decreseing desire for the Lumiere brothers “actualites” and similar films. Only when non-fiction films began to adapt fiction conventions did they begin to pull in an audience and become more commercially viable. “Nanook of the North” (1922) was the first to do this successfully.

ROBERT J. FLAHERTY The son of a mining engineer in Canada, Flaherty grew up with a taste for the great outdoors and soon found himself doing professional work scouting for precious minerals. During one of his trips, after being encouraged by his boss to take a camera to document his travels, Flaherty become enamored with an Inuit tribe and become obsessed with presenting this noble people/lifestyle to the world. He raised funds and spent the next six years filming the Inuit people. After an unfortunate smoking accident, Flaherty lost nearly 300,000 feet of film and made him start from scratch on the project.

NANOOK AND THE NARRATIVE Only in retrospect did Flaherty realize he had basically filmed a lot of useless crap. He knew that he needed something more personalized if he was going to get the audience he felt this story deserved. He thus adopted more narrative techniques (staged scenes, defined characters, suspense, conflict and resolution) and technical conventions (shot/counter-shot, POVs, etc.), to dramatize the event and engage the audiences attention more effectively. Nanook of the North is often critized for its authenticity, as Flaherty acknowledged staging certain events, and convincing the eskimos to behave in ways they no longer did for story purposes.

THE IMPACT OF NANOOK The term “documentary” was invented by John Grierson to describe the film Nanook of the North, and its “creative interpretation of reality” Many films imitated Nanook after this, and the Documentary became something that could be viable in the box office. To this day, the line of the real and the imposed is a very important question to the genre as a whole.