Nanook of the North

USA, 1922. Director Robert J. Flaherty. 88min.

Robert J. Flaherty’s early 'documentary' film from 1922 foretold the allure of reality television. It is a piece of operatic fiction capturing a slice of an extraordinary life, full of brutality and beauty. What was first accepted as an innocent, observational portrait of a family of Inuit in Canada's northern Quebec region, has since become known as a piece of orientalist narrative. With the backing of French fur company Revillon Frères, Flaherty spent 16 months filming a family in the dramatised and costumed throes of survival. Their metropolis is a sprawling sleet landscape full of flat plains of snow. Their home, a hand-carved igloo made of blocks of ice. The film offers a breathtaking depiction of life far outside of conventional civilization where foxes, seals, and polar bears are captured and stripped of their flesh for food and clothing. It appears to be a simple life, unchanged and unchallenged by modern advancements. Framed through an anachronistic lens (including some of the dress), Nanook displays a way of living that is symbiotic to the cadence and scarcity of the world’s natural resources. 

Past screenings

Grounded: Fashion’s Entanglements with Nature – London
Wednesday 28 May 2025, 17:00 | London College of Fashion
Presented as a double bill alongside Angry Inuk (2016), with introduction by Cyana Madsen.