Robert Joseph Flaherty

Born Feb. 16, 1884, in Iron Mountain, Mich.; died July 23, 1951, in Dummerston, Vt. American film director.

Flaherty studied at the Michigan College of Mining and Technology. He began exploring the Canadian polar regions in 1910, and in 1918 he made an amateur documentary film about the life of the Eskimos. His Nanook of the North (1922) became a classic of the documentary cinema. A work of profound humanity, it tells about the struggle for existence of a people living in the severe conditions of the polar regions. The film extended the principles of the director’s art to documentary cinematography. In 1923 and 1924, Flaherty lived on the island of Savai’i in the Pacific Ocean and made a film, Moana (1926), about the way of life, work, and ceremonies of the Polynesians; the film was a poetic expression of the unity of man and nature. Among Flaherty’s best films were Industrial Britain (1933, with J. Grierson), Man of Aran (1934), and Louisiana Story (1948).