Robert Flaherty (1884-1951)

Alias:
Flaherty
R.J. Flaherty
Robert J. Flaherty
Robert Joseph Flaherty

Birthplace:
Iron Mountain, Michigan, USA

Born:
February 16, 1884

Died:
July 23, 1951

Robert Joseph Flaherty (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 narrative documentary with Moana (1926), set in the South Seas, and Man of Aran (1934), filmed in Ireland's Aran Islands. Flaherty is considered the "father" of both the documentary and the ethnographic film. Andrew Sarris in his influential book of film criticism The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968 included him in the "pantheon" of the 14 greatest film directors who had worked in the United States.

Additional information:

The Search Form


Co-Director:
1928  White Shadows in the South Seas

Director:
1916  The Eskimo
1922  Nanook of the North
1925  The Pottery Maker
1926  Moana
1927  Twenty-Four Dollar Island
1928  White Shadows in the South Seas
1931  Industrial Britain
1933  The English Potter
1934  Man of Aran
1935  A Night of Storytelling
1937  Elephant Boy
1938  The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
1942  The Land
1948  Louisiana Story
1949  Guernica

Director of Photography:
1916  The Eskimo
1922  Nanook of the North
1925  The Pottery Maker
1926  Moana
1927  Twenty-Four Dollar Island
1928  White Shadows in the South Seas
1931  Industrial Britain
1933  The English Potter
1934  Man of Aran
1935  A Night of Storytelling
1937  Elephant Boy
1938  The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
1942  The Land
1943  Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia
1943  Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike
1948  Louisiana Story
1949  Guernica

Editor:
1916  The Eskimo
1922  Nanook of the North
1925  The Pottery Maker
1926  Moana
1927  Twenty-Four Dollar Island
1928  White Shadows in the South Seas
1931  Industrial Britain
1933  The English Potter
1934  Man of Aran
1935  A Night of Storytelling
1937  Elephant Boy
1938  The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
1942  The Land
1943  Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia
1943  Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike
1948  Louisiana Story
1949  Guernica

Producer:
1916  The Eskimo
1922  Nanook of the North
1925  The Pottery Maker
1926  Moana
1927  Twenty-Four Dollar Island
1928  White Shadows in the South Seas
1931  Industrial Britain
1931  Tabu
1933  The English Potter
1934  Man of Aran
1935  A Night of Storytelling
1937  Elephant Boy
1938  The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
1942  The Land
1943  Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia
1943  Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike
1948  Louisiana Story
1949  Guernica

Screenplay:
1916  The Eskimo
1922  Nanook of the North
1925  The Pottery Maker
1926  Moana
1927  Twenty-Four Dollar Island
1928  White Shadows in the South Seas
1931  Industrial Britain
1931  Tabu
1933  The English Potter
1934  Man of Aran
1935  A Night of Storytelling
1937  Elephant Boy
1938  The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
1942  The Land
1943  Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia
1943  Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike
1948  Louisiana Story
1949  Guernica

Writer:
1916  The Eskimo
1922  Nanook of the North
1925  The Pottery Maker
1926  Moana
1927  Twenty-Four Dollar Island
1928  White Shadows in the South Seas
1931  Industrial Britain
1931  Tabu
1933  The English Potter
1934  Man of Aran
1935  A Night of Storytelling
1937  Elephant Boy
1938  The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
1942  The Land
1943  Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia
1943  Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike
1948  Louisiana Story
1949  Guernica

About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

Regarding profile removals and data corrections:

  • If you would like your profile removed from this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's gone from their site, it should soon be gone from this site.
  • If you would like to correct movie data on this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's corrected on their site, it should soon be corrected on this site.
  • For additional corrections and profile removals, please e-mail The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.