Nanook of the North et le Cinéma Ethnographique: Cinédoc ou Synecdoque?

Robert Flaherty produced the first documentary with a view to exalting the survival of the fittest among the Inuit. Like many discourses on the other, this film is at once celebratory and condescending. The director worked within a socio-historical context that had faith in the ability of anthropology and cinema to document the other in an objective fashion. But his perspective is romanticized through the lens of preestablished ideologies. This …