![]() ![]() Heather addresses the camera she openly acknowledges her awareness of its presence. ![]() As with Nanook, the framing is blunt and straightforward a full length shot facing straight towards camera. The opening shot comprises the blurry tracking of a video camera until it homes in on its subject – Heather, the director of her own documentary on the Blair Witch. A bare, black-and-white title tells us how three students disappeared and this is what’s left of their footage its presentation and direct language appeal to our sense of truthfulness. His ‘ignorance’ of the camera suggests a life caught on film.Ĭompare this opening to that of The Blair Witch Project. The straightforwardness of the shot seeks to underline the genuine nature of its subject in contrast to the entrances of characters in fictional films. Flaherty follows these titles with a close, frontal shot of Nanook himself he is doing nothing and is facing away from the camera. This affirmation of reality reinforces the following titles on the ‘Barren lands’ of the North and the ‘fearless, lovable, happy-go-lucky Eskimo’, despite their rather fanciful tone. It defines the people within the film as ‘real’, as having a life outside the film, one which they compromised in order for the film to be made. As William Rothman has noted, this caption operates not just as a thank you but as an indirect affirmation of the film’s veracity. Is there not as much falsehood here as in the collaboration between the directors and actors of The Blair Witch Project ? Both projects are ‘hiding’ that falsehood – and with similar strategies.įlaherty’s film opens with a title screen acknowledging ‘the kindliness, faithfulness and patience’ of Nanook and his family in the making of the picture. Thus, the subjects of Flaherty’s documentary were well aware of what he was creating – a spectacle for an intrigued audience – and were engaged as much as he in the ‘construction’ of an Eskimo’s life. ‘Nanook’ himself was constantly advising his director on more exciting material they could film after the success of their walrus hunt, an attack on the lair of a she-bear might thrill their viewers even more. For, despite their portrayal on screen as simple, hardy folk, behind camera, they were busy cutting Flaherty’s film for him. ![]() Instead, the whole documentary was a reconstruction of customs practiced by the Eskimos years before the actual filming, one in which the Eskimos themselves were complicit. For Nanook was not the real name of the protagonist of Flaherty’s film, nor was the life portrayed therein one that was really experienced by that protagonist. It would seem an incongruous pairing if it weren’t for the fact that both are fictions. The second film is one which on first sight would appear to be its polar opposite, The Blair Witch Project, a modern horror movie built up of ‘fake’ documentary fragments. The first is Nanook Of The North, Robert Flaherty’s portrait of the Eskimo people and their struggle to survive in a hostile climate which is generally taken to be the first documentary ever made. One way of answering this question may be to turn it on its head and ask ‘How much can fiction be realistically treated before it stops becoming fiction?’ And as a way of exploring that idea, it’s beneficial to look at two films that have strangely book-ended the life of the documentary so far. The question, then, for the documentarist is how much actuality can be creatively treated before the status of the film as a documentary is called into question. What does that phrase actually mean ? What kind of film is it proposing the filmmaker should produce? Firstly, there is the question of ‘actuality’ how far is that just taken to mean what one sees with one’s eyes – the simple occurrence – and how far is it meant in the ‘philosophical’ sense – the inner reality or essence of an event? Even if one accepts the conclusion that by ‘actuality’, Grierson meant the common sense notion of ‘what is’, then what does he mean by suggesting that that reality be ‘creatively treated’? Surely the more a filmmaker imposes his own creative vision, the more an objective representation of reality is compromised. Grierson’s definition of the documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ seems to have been a particularly unsuccessful one, considering the amount of frustrated debate it has led to in the decades since. How far is The Blair Witch Project more of a documentary than Nanook Of The North? ![]()
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