Robert J. Flaherty

Yeah, I mean, in one sense, you take this all the way back to a movie like Nunuk of the North, which is not a Canadian film, but it was shot up here in Canada, like up in the Inuk territory.

And, you know, in that movie, you got Robert Flaherty coaching performances out of these real subjects, out of these Inuk people.

And coaching them to stage their rituals of daily life.

But these are staging like walrus hunting in a way that they don't do it like that anymore.

So we're talking about what is arguably the first documentary ever made, which is called Nanook of the North.

And this Canadian Robert Flaherty goes up to, is it Alaska?

yeah yeah alaska

and he films with the inuit tribe and finds a guy named nanook and he basically makes a portrait of nanook come to find out many years later we're all showing this in film school this is like foundational documentary she's a

More than a century later, it is still visually stunning, even if we now know that many of the scenes were actually staged.

After its release, it was the filmmaker, Robert Flaherty, who grabbed the spotlight.

Anthropologist Kirk French wanted to change that.

He filmed a documentary called A Century After Nanook, working with the residents of Inukjuak, the Canadian village where Nanook was filmed.

Uh, Shomic, let me start with you.

I mean, the man who is featured in Nanook of the North was not actually named Nanook.

Uh, Robert Flaherty made that up.

What was his real name?

This program comes from the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, New York.

York.This year, the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar has coordinated a series of pods which will, will present its program at seven international venues, including Skidmore College's Tang Museum.

The three-day series will begin on, uh, on Thursday, October 8th, culminating in a day-long program on Saturday, October 10th, 2026.

HMM producer Carolyn Tennant spoke with two, two Picturelock 1's co-founders, Emma Baiada and Adam Tinkle, to discuss the Flaherty, what it make, what makes it unique, and how the seminar was inspired or has inspired Picturelock 1.

To learn more about the program and to register for the event, visit www.tang.skidmore.edu.

2026 marks the 71st anniversary of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, a unique gathering of cinephiles and media makers who take a deep dive into the world of film, all framed and organized by a central theme.

This year, it's Gestures of Refusal.

The seminar has collaborated with a network of venues, including Skidmore's Tang Museum, to host a series of Flaherty pods.

2026 marks the 71st anniversary of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, a unique gathering of cinephiles and media makers who take a deep dive into the world of film, all framed and organized by a central theme.

This year, it's Gestures of Refusal.

The seminar has collaborated with a network of venues, including Skidmore's Tang Museum, to host a series of Flaherty Pods.

Uh, we have a little screening space in a bank vault at 54th Street downtown.

We've also been working, uh, with a number of other organizations to co-present, um, programs, and this is our second year, um, as Picture Loch One, uh, co-presenting, uh, a Flaherty Pod, uh, which it- of which this year there are seven around the world, um, offering up the film program that the Flaherty has curated for, uh, more intimate local groups in different places.

So for those who don't know Robert Flaherty and have not heard of the seminar, can you tell us who Robert Flaherty is and how the seminar started?

Robert Flaherty was a, a foundational figure in the development of documentary film.

He's well known, uh, for Nanook of the North and other films frequently taught in intro film courses that really, um, uh, pioneered an approach to, uh, observational cinema in some ways, although he was also controversial for staging, uh, many of the aspects of his films.

All right, a quick bit of background about how what you are listening to in this show evolved.

Some listeners may recall an episode back in May of 2025 that was about classical music the director Stanley Kubrick used in his movies.

When some fans of the podcast wrote suggesting some more movie music, I thought about doing a show based this time around on the English director David Lean.

Lean, maybe best known for Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago, commissioned scores from some of the greatest composers of the 20th century, as opposed to Kubrick who tended to pick from existing works.

But the Lean scores opened up a hopefully bigger idea of film scores by composers who were actually better known in the concert hall.

Though I have in the past played you works that Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev wrote for the screen.

Okay, some more music.

In 1934, the Hungarian-born London-based producer-director Alexander Korda approached the writer H.G. Wells and asked him to adapt his book The Shape of Things to Come into a film script.