Friday, September 1, 2017

#33 - Nanook of the North


#33 is the silent classic "Nanook of the North"  - He wasn't really called that and a chunk of this movie is staged or filmed using traditional behaviors that the Inuit had stopped using by 1920 - (they were hunting with rifles by then) - but nevertheless, it's a classic.

I spent a few years up north with Alaska Natives - this way of life has gone but small traces of it remain here and there.  

From a film history standpoint, this is considered the first real historical documentary - so the idea that some stuff was staged, well, there were no guidelines for that sort of thing yet - nowadays though, reality tv is staging so much of this kind of thing anyways that the animals they catch would already be dead and frozen and brought out for the "kill" shot

it was interesting with a nice soundtrack composed in 1999 to go with the silent film - there is a brief feature with his widow but not much else to this Criterion release

As a side note it's not in print by Criterion anymore but it's in the public domain, so the wayback archive has a copy of it - it's also on youtube - in fact I'm not sure 100% of the source, but this copy seems like it's in even higher def. than the copy I got from my library -

In fact, in retrospect, I wish I had watched this on youtube instead of my DVD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoUafjAH0cg

RB

1 comment:

  1. I've watched this movie several times on YouTube and it's one of my favorite reasons to stop by the 'Tube. I highly recommend it. I also think if you want to understand this movie in context, another great film you might enjoy would be "Reel Injuns" which is a critical documentary on the history of American Indian/Native American/Alaska Native/Indigenous/First People's presence in film.

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