Robert Flaherty

Born: 1884-02-16

Robert Joseph Flaherty (February 16, 1884 – July 23, 1951) was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length documentary film, Nanook of the North (1922). The film made his reputation and nothing in his later life fully equaled its success, although he continued the development of this new genre of narrative documentary with Moana (1926), set in the South Seas, and Man of Aran (1934), filmed in Ireland's Aran Islands. Flaherty is considered the "father" of both the documentary and the ethnographic film. Andrew Sarris in his influential book of film criticism The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968 included him in the "pantheon" of the 14 greatest film directors who had worked in the United States.


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The Land

as Narrator (voice)
Released: 1942-04-01

Documentary showing the poor state that American agriculture had fallen into during the Great...

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Monica in the South Seas

as Self (archival footage)
Released: 2023-11-03

Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert...

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A Boatload of Wild Irishmen

as Himself (archive footage)
Released: 2010-07-07

Robert Flaherty is credited with being the father of the modern documentary after making "Nanook...

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