Editing Robert J. Flaherty (section)

==''Nanook of the North''==
In 1913, on Flaherty's expedition to prospect the [[Belcher Islands]], his boss, [[Sir William Mackenzie]], suggested that he take a motion picture camera along. He brought a [[Bell and Howell]] hand cranked motion picture camera. He was particularly intrigued by the life of the Inuit, and spent so much time filming them that he had begun to neglect his real work. When Flaherty returned to Toronto with 30,000 feet of film, the [[Nitrocellulose#Film|nitrate film stock]] was ignited in a fire started from his cigarette in his editing room. His film was destroyed and his hands were burned. Although his editing print was saved and shown several times, Flaherty was not satisfied with the results. "It was utterly inept, simply a scene of this or that, no relation, no thread of story or continuity whatever, and it must have bored the audience to distraction. Certainly it bored me."<ref>''The World of Robert Flaherty'', Richard Griffith</ref>

Flaherty was determined to make a new film, one following a life of a typical Inuk and his family. In 1920, he secured funds from [[Revillon Frères]], a French fur trade company to shoot what was to become ''[[Nanook of the North]]''.<ref>''The Innocent Eye'', [[Arthur Calder-Marshall]]</ref> On August 15, 1920, Flaherty arrived in [[Port Harrison]], [[Quebec]] to shoot his film. He brought two Akeley motion-picture cameras which the Inuit referred to as "the aggie".<ref name="documentary">''Year of the Hunter'' CBC documentary</ref> He also brought full developing, printing, and projection equipment to show the Inuit his film, while he was still in the process of filming. He lived in an attached cabin to the Revillon Frères trading post.

In making ''Nanook'', Flaherty cast various locals in parts in the film, in the way that one would cast actors in a work of fiction. With the aim of showing traditional Inuit life, he also staged some scenes, including the ending, where Allakariallak (who acts the part of Nanook) and his screen family are supposedly at risk of dying if they could not find or build shelter quickly enough. The half-igloo had been built beforehand, with a side cut away for light so that Flaherty's camera could get a good shot. Flaherty insisted that the Inuit not use rifles to hunt{{Citation needed|date=December 2018}}, though their use had by that time become common. He also pretended at one point that he could not hear the hunters' pleas for help, instead continuing to film their struggle and putting them in greater danger.{{Citation needed|date=January 2008}}
<ref name="documentary" />

[[Melanie McGrath]] writes that, while living in [[Nunavik|Northern Quebec]] for the year of filming ''Nanook'', Flaherty had an affair with his lead actress, the young Inuk woman who played Nanook's wife. A few months after he left, she gave birth to his son, Josephie (December 25, 1921 – 1984), whom he never acknowledged. Josephie was one of the [[High Arctic relocation|Inuit who were relocated]] in the 1950s to very difficult living conditions in [[Resolute, Nunavut|Resolute]] and [[Grise Fiord]], in the extreme north.<ref>Throughout Melanie McGrath's ''The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal and Survival in the High Arctic''. {{ISBN|0-00-715796-7}} (London: Fourth Estate, 2006). {{ISBN|1-4000-4047-7}} (New York: Random House, 2007).</ref> Corroboration of McGrath's account is not readily available and Flaherty never discussed the matter.

''Nanook'' began a series of films that Flaherty made on the same theme of humanity against the elements. Others included ''Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age'', set in Samoa, and ''Man of Aran'', set in the Aran Islands of Ireland. All these films employ the same rhetorical devices: the dangers of nature and the struggle of the communities to eke out an existence.