Robert Joseph Flaherty
(United Kingdom)

Robert Joseph Flaherty was born in 1884 in USA. He was sent to Upper Canada College in Toronto for his education. He later began his career as a prospector in the Hudson Bay region of Canada. His first film, Nanook of the North (1922), a dramatic interpretation of the Eskimo way of life, was based on 16 months of living with them and filming their lives. His film was an international success, and its subjective presentation of reality set a model of excellence for nonfiction filmmaking, foreshadowing the documentary movement of the 1930s. John Grierson, the founder of the movement, first used the term documentary in a reference to Flaherty’s film, Moana (1926), set in the South Seas, a record of a people untouched by the corruption of civilization.
In the 1930s and ’40s Flaherty’s most famous films were Tabu (1931), codirected with the German director F.W. Murnau, Industrial Britain (1932), made with John Grierson, Man of Aran (1934), The Land (1942), and Louisiana Story (1948).
Flaherty is considered a pioneer of documentary film. He was one of the first to combine documentary subjects with a fiction-film-like narrative and poetic treatment.

Films
Filmography
The English Potter
UK, 1933
The Glassmakers of England
UK, 1933
Art of the English Craftsman
UK, 1933
Tabu - together with F.W. Murnau
84´, USA, 1931
Elephant Boy - together with Zoltan Korda
80´, UK, 1937
Nanook of the North
79´, USA/France, 1922
Louisiana Story
78´, USA, 1948
Moana
77´, USA, 1926
Man of Aran
76´, UK, 1934
The Titan: Story of Michelangelo - together with Richard Lyford
70´, Switzerland/West Germany, 1950
The Land
43´, USA, 1942
Industrial Britain
21´, UK, 1933
The Potterymaker
15´, USA, 1925
The Twenty-Four-Dollar Island
10´, USA, 1927

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