Review of Nanook of the North (1922) by Blackity B — 16 Aug 2010

It's amazing that one of the world's first feature length documentaries was as fabricated as almost every one that followed it up to present day. Stories have circulated that Flaherty forced Nanook and his contemporaries to switch from the guns they normally used to kill seals to spears, which was what Flaherty thought they should use. Also, Flaherty was once smoking in the editing room and lit part of the print on fire, necessitating the re-staging of several sequences.

Nevertheless, it's the closest thing to a documentary produced at the time, and without it, we wouldn't be seeing shows like 'Planet Earth' Today.