Robert J. Flaherty
Part of a series on the Anthropology of art, media, music, dance and film Basic concepts Color symbolism Visual culture Body culture Material culture New media Case studies Art Art of the Americas Indigenous Australian art Oceanic art Film Nanook of the North The Ax Fight Nǃai, the Story of a ǃKung Woman Incidents of Travel in Chichen Itza Museums National Anthropological Archives Centro Cultural Mexiquense Museum of Anthropology at UBC Museum of Anthropology, Cambridge Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Robert Hull Fleming Museum List of museums Related articles Ethnographic film Video ethnography Ethnocinema List of ethnographic films Margaret Mead Film Festival Cantometrics Museum anthropology Salvage ethnography Tribal art/Folk art Major theorists Tim Asch Gregory Bateson Franz Boas Pierre Bourdieu John Collier Frances Densmore Robert J. Flaherty Robert Gardner Alfred Gell Robert Hugh Layton Claude Lévi-Strauss Alan Lomax John Marshall Margaret Mead Alan Merriam Bruno Nettl Hortense Powdermaker Jean Rouch Social and cultural anthropology v t e Robert Joseph Flaherty, FRGS (/ˈflæərti/; 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 docufiction, e.g. with Moana (1926), set in the South Seas, and Man of Aran (1934), filmed in Ireland's Aran Islands. He is considered the "Father" of both documentary and ethnographic film. Flaherty was married to writer Frances H. Flaherty from 1914 until his death in 1951. Frances worked on several of her husband's films, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Story for Louisiana Story (1948). R. J. Flaherty taking a movie, Port Harrison, QC, 1920-21