Robert J. Flaherty
Robert and Frances Flaherty in the editing room.
Widely regarded as the forefather of documentary cinema, Robert Joseph Flaherty was born in Iron Mountain, Michigan on February 16th, 1884, the eldest of six children of Robert and Susan Flaherty. At the age of 13, Robert and his family moved northwest to Ontario, Canada, where his father, a mining engineer, took his young son along with him on prospecting expeditions across Northern Canada. Having received little formal schooling, he briefly attended Upper Canada College, Toronto, and the Michigan School of Mines. In 1914, he married his fiancée Frances Hubbard. Hubbard came from a highly educated family, her father being a distinguished geologist. Hailing from a highly educated family, Hubbard graduated from Bryn Mawr University in Pennsylvania, studied music and poetry in Paris, and was also secretary of the local Suffragette Society. Following their marriage, Frances Flaherty became Robert’s creative partner, taking on the role of director, helping to edit and distribute her husband's films, and securing crucial funding to continue his work.
A still from the documentary landmark, NANOOK OF THE NORTH (1922)
Robert spent the years between 1910 and 1920 prospecting for iron ore in northern Canada. In 1913, on his expedition to prospect the southeastern Hudson Bay region, it was suggested by his employer that he bring a motion picture camera along, and his career path took a different direction. During this time, he was particularly intrigued by the life of the Inuit people situated in and around the Belcher Islands region. Determined to make a film featuring the Inuits he befriended during his expeditions, Flaherty secured funds from Revillon Frères, a French fur trade company to make what became NANOOK OF THE NORTH (1922). Shot on two Akeley motion-picture cameras which the Inuit referred to as "the aggie", Flaherty also brought full developing, printing, and projection equipment to show the Inuits his progress while he was still in the process of filming. Generating ideas 'in the field', he would shoot vast amounts of footage - in his own words, photographing what the camera wanted him to photograph - and distill his ideas and material from this. Despite featuring dramatized scenes and sets, Nanook is considered one of the first documentary-style films, setting a template for future nonfiction filmmaking.
Frances (Left) and Robert Flaherty (right) with their cinematographer during the filming of LOUISIANA STORY
After finding success with Nanook of the North, Flaherty became highly sought after by Hollywood. Nanook began a series of films that Flaherty was to make on the same theme of humanity against the elements. Others included MOANA (1926), set in Samoa, and MAN OF ARAN (1936), set in the Aran Islands of Western Ireland. All these films employ the same rhetorical devices: the dangers of nature and the struggle of indigenous communities to eke out an existence. After a troubled production with legendary German film director F. W. Murnau on another South Seas picture, TABU (1931), Robert and Frances left Hollywood to work in Engand and Ireland throughout the 30’s, a time that proved somewhat tumultuous as Flaherty’s uncompromising work methods met increasing pushback from government film financiers, producers, and collaborators. Robert and Frances returned to the United States to make a vast documentary about US Agriculture, THE LAND (1942), which saw the couple traveling some 100,000 miles and shooting a series of striking images of rural America during the dust bowl era. His last film, LOUISIANA STORY (1948) follows the installation of an oil rig in a Louisiana swamp.
Robert Flaherty died in Dummerston, Vermont on July 23rd 1951, of cerebral thrombosis. Flaherty is still considered a pioneer of the documentary film, though the nature of his work and in particular, how he influenced his subject matter has fallen into scrutiny by modern film scholars. He was one of the first to combine documentary subjects with a fiction-film-like narrative, combining natural curiosity for the everyday life of indigenous peoples with an innate talent for lyrical imagery. His work continues to be commemorated at the annual Flaherty Seminar, a film study center for filmmakers, curators, and students inaugurated by Frances Flaherty in 1954. Frances devoted the rest of her life to the articulation and explanation of Robert Flaherty's view on documentary film, both in her writings (including her book, The Odyssey of a Filmmaker: Robert Flaherty's Story, 1960), and especially her establishment of the Seminars, where she helped support the next generation of documentary filmmakers. She died in Dummerston, Vermont on June 22nd, 1972.
Frances Flaherty with students during a Flaherty Seminar in the 1960s.
As she put it, her husband made films for one reason only:
“to give the camera a chance to find that ‘moment of truth,' that flash of perception, that penetration into the heart of the matter, which he knew the camera, left to itself, could find. The point in this process was that it was purely visual. Words played no part in it; it went beyond words. It was simply a degree of seeing. As ice turns to water and water to steam, and a degree of temperature becomes a transformation, so a degree of seeing may become a transformation.”
Further Reading
The Flaherty Foundation: theflaherty.org