Below are screening notes written for the 57th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in 2011, a week of programming entitled Sonic Truth.
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| Kivalina (photo in Earl Rossman' book
Black
Sunlight: A Log of the Arctic
Oxford
University Press, 1926 |
SESSION 11: Nanook
of the South
Too often Flaherty’s landmark Nanook of the North has been discussed
in isolation, as the “first” documentary, a masterpiece, or singular
achievement. In this session -- a completist’s archival look at the Flaherty
legacy -- we see other silent-era
films derived from Nanook. These have
only recently been rediscovered by archivists -- in Argentina, Austria, and the
U.S. Their first-time appearances at the Flaherty Seminar are intended to
refocus the discussion on Nanook’s
international influence rather than Flaherty’s “genius.”
Intertwined
with this is the remarkable work of rediscovery and access being achieved by
the Museo del Cine, a film archive and museum governed by the city of Buenos
Aires. As its director Paul Félix-Didier said in the wake of publicity
surrounding her rediscovery of the director’s cut of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), that well-known movie
might be one of the less interesting ones in this significant archive of world
cinema.
Coming Attractions: 1928-1929
trailer compilation 3.5 min.,
35mm on DigiBeta
In 2010, the
Academy Film Archive preserved this rare reel of MGM trailers, which includes a
preview of White Shadows in the
South Seas (1928), the first film MGM released with a
recorded soundtrack. Robert Flaherty shot extensive amounts of footage in
Tahiti (some of which appears in the final version) before W. S. (Woody) Van
Dyke replaced him as director.
Nanook of the
North (Robert Flaherty, 1922) looping
8 seconds, HD
In
June 2011, the Library of Congress’s National Audiovisual Conservation Center
made this test 4k scan of its 35mm nitrate print of Nanook, for possible use in an upcoming IMAX production about the
Arctic. LOC sent the Seminar this high-resolution footage of Inuit children appearing
in the film.
Die Entdeckung
Wiens am Nordpol (The Discovery of
Vienna at the North Pole)
(Peter Eng, 1923)
10’ 35mm on QuickTime
Piano accompaniment: Elaine Brennan (recorded
live, 2010)
This odd but lively
topical riff on Nanook was commissioned
to promote the Vienna International Trade Fair (W.I.M., in German), combining
animation with live action sequences. As in Flaherty’s film, there is a joke
about Eskimo children taking cod liver oil; but this North Poler encounters not
a phonograph but a movie projector. While the cartoon section retains its humor
(the animator’s hand comes on screen to turn on the Northern Lights), the transition
to an actor playing the “Lapplander” makes the character more grotesque than
comic.
(Thanks to Nikolaus Wostry,
Filmarchiv Austria, for permission to exhibit. Michael Loebenstein and Michael
Cowan provided English subtitles.)
En las Orcadas del Sur (In the South Orkney Islands) (José Manuel
Moneta, 1927)
ca. 15 of 60’ DVCAM of 16mm print made from 35mm original
A meteorologist doing
research in Antarctica, José Manuel Moneta wrote in his memoir, Cuatro años en las Orcadas del sur (1940), that he saw Nanook of the North in Cordoba,
Argentina, then decided to make a film himself. In 1924, the prominent producer
Federico Valle financed the project and trained him to shoot film during his
return to island research base. Valle’s writer provided a scenario to guide the
shooting -- suggesting the film center on a family of penguins[!]. Ironically,
like Flaherty, Moneta saw the first version of his film destroyed in a fire. In
1927, he returned and remade it. The results include a surprising degree of
cinematic play: matte shots, long dissolves,
Decades
later, Moneta recorded himself narrating his original documentary (with music from
commercial recordings added). In 2011, Paula Félix-Didier tracked down the
audiotape and rediscovered a 16mm print of En
las Orcadas del Sur. The ¼” magnetic tape has begun to deteriorate and
requires professional preservation before it can be played and replicated.
Kivalina la esquimal [Kivalina the
Eskimo] (Earl Rossman, 1925) 87’
DVD / 35mm
Excerpt
of 47 minutes, from Acts 1-2, 7-8. Live accompaniment by Suzanne Binet-Audet
(ondes Martenot) and Kareya Audet (percussion, computer, and vocals); English narration (also live) by Tan Pin Pin.
Shot in Alaska with an Inuit cast, of the American film Kivalina of the Ice Lands survives only
in this Spanish-language edition. A worn 16mm reduction negative taken from a
35mm print was found in the Museo del Cine’s Manuel Peña Rodriguez Collection
(also the source of the complete Metropolis,
famously rediscovered in 2008). Although the copy is apparently complete, Kivalina remains “lost” in another
sense. In the voluminous writings about Nanook
of the North over the past ninety years, there is barely mention of this
feature-length production, which had a major distributor behind its theatrical
release.
Earl
Rossman, like Flaherty, was a genuine Arctic explorer, photographer, and
cinematographer. He too lost all of the footage he shot on his first
expedition. Like Flaherty, Rossman cast indigenous people as themselves,
directing them to recreate hunts, build igloos, and the like. Like Nanook, Kivalina received theatrical
distribution from Pathé. How has this step-daughter [step-sister?]of Nanook escaped discussion until
now?
The footage of the aurora borealis that frames the
story was originally in color, and Rossman claimed his was the first such
recording. However, Kivalina of the Ice
Lands is not a documentary but an archetypal narrative: a great hunter must
overcome harsh elements to secure the pelt of a rare silver fox, which a shaman
requires of him before allowing his marriage to Kivalina.
- notes and research by Dan Streible
A version of this text was published in:
57th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar: Sonic Truth (New York: International Film Seminars, 2011).
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| Rossman shooting on location in southwest Alaska.
photo in Black
Sunlight
|
Kivalina fact sheet
Kivalina of
the Ice Lands (1925)
Director: Earl Rossman
B.C.R. Productions
Distributor: Pathé Exchange (35mm; 5,946 ft.)
Kivalina, la esquimal (16mm transferred to video at 18 fps runs
ca. 87 min.)
Kivalina (The Heroine), Aguvaluk (The Hero), Nashulik (Witch doctor),
Tokatoo (Kivalina’s brother), and Nuwak (The Master Hunter).
AFI Catalog, plot synopsis:
Aguvaluk, a great Eskimo hunter, plans to marry Kivalina and goes to the witch doctor for his consent. The witch doctor tells Aguvaluk that he may not marry until he has discharged all of his father's debts by bringing back the hides of 40 seals. The great hunter accomplishes this incredible feat and returns with the hides only to be told that, in order to pay off the interest on the debt, he must also bring in the hide of a silver fox. After great privation, Aguvaluk captures the fox, but before he can return to safety, he is caught in a fierce storm. He builds an ice shelter that protects him from the bitter cold and the following morning kills a small reindeer, satisfying his hunger with the meat and using the hide to make a small sled. Finally reaching home, Aguvaluk prepares to marry Kivalina, and there is a great feast.
Aguvaluk, a great Eskimo hunter, plans to marry Kivalina and goes to the witch doctor for his consent. The witch doctor tells Aguvaluk that he may not marry until he has discharged all of his father's debts by bringing back the hides of 40 seals. The great hunter accomplishes this incredible feat and returns with the hides only to be told that, in order to pay off the interest on the debt, he must also bring in the hide of a silver fox. After great privation, Aguvaluk captures the fox, but before he can return to safety, he is caught in a fierce storm. He builds an ice shelter that protects him from the bitter cold and the following morning kills a small reindeer, satisfying his hunger with the meat and using the hide to make a small sled. Finally reaching home, Aguvaluk prepares to marry Kivalina, and there is a great feast.
Mordaunt Hall, “An Eskimo Romance,” New York Times, June 29, 1925.
As an antidote to the sultry
weather, "Kivalina of the Ice Lands," the principal attraction at the
Mark Strand this week, undoubtedly served a purpose yesterday, as for more than
an hour one felt all the cooler for centering one's attention upon a frozen
background with scenes of the "restless Arctic Ocean, silenced by the grip
of the deadly Winter." This film was produced by Earl Rossman, who has
succeeded in making an informing and interesting effort. It, however, melts
into mediocrity when compared with Robert J. Flaherty's masterpiece,
"Nanook of the North," which was presented at the Capitol three years
ago.
We are informed that in producing
this new Eskimo picture Mr. Rossman endured the hardships of life in the
Northern regions for approximately two years. An important result of Mr.
Rossman's earnest efforts are two prismatic sequences of the majestic aurora
borealis, which are impressive in spite of being all too short to give one a
really comprehensive pictorial conception of this stirring phenomenon. There
are the shooting lights and the giant rays of gold, green and red streaking up
from what appears to be the other side of the world, looking like a blurred and
constantly moving rainbow of vast proportions.
The producer claims that this is the
first colored motion picture taken of the northern lights. In these stretches
there is an occasional fringing which causes one to wonder whether the colors
are as true as they might be.
Mr. Rossman has endeavored to
increase the interest in this Arctic film by an Eskimo romance in which the
hero accepts an appalling task from the Witch Doctor, one Nashulik. Aguvaluk,
this gallant lover of Kivalina, is told that he must bring the wizened old
Witch Doctor forty seals so that his father's spirit will rest in peace. The
courageous Aguvaluk goes forth to bring back what is needed so that he may wed
Kivalina, and through his adventures one has an insight into the colorless
existence of the Eskimos. They are seen protecting themselves from a wicked
wind by building a wall of great slabs of ice. The thousands of reindeer are
driven into this Arctic camp and the unperturbed denizens of the North proceed
to construct the comfortless igloos of blocks of snow and ice. The dogs are
seen blinking as they squat, obviously eager for protection against the
blizzard. Never have they known the comfort of a hearthrug before an open fire!
One has a glimpse in another stretch
of a so-called village "sprawled on the edge of a frozen ocean." Yet
these stories of the North make the most of their lives, for Mr. Rossman shows
what one might allude to as their Derby. Here one sees them in groups watching
the reindeer, attached to sleds, racing.
There are hard, glum Eskimo
countenances, others that now and again light up with a flicker of a smile, and
still others that appear quite contented. The grimness of the life stirs one,
as for months these folks have no color on which to gaze. There are only the
bleak, boundless wilds of snow and ice.
Aguvaluk is seen busy spearing a
seal. Actually there is not much of this business, as no sooner has Mr. Rossman
depicted the hero killing one of these animals than follows a scene in which he
has the quota of forty. He hastens back to the old parchment-faced Witch
Doctor, who strikes one as an old villain. Aguvaluk is told that it is all very
well to bring the forty seals, but how about the interest? His father's spirit
cannot rest until that is paid. What is the interest? It is that Aguvaluk at
the most difficult season of the year must bring a silver fox. Thereupon ensues
the hero's adventures in finding and killing the silver fox.
One of the most
stirring chapters is where Aguvaluk is caught in a terrific blizzard, and to
save himself he has to construct an igloo in great haste. One perceives here
that by the time the camera man starts to turn his crank Aguvaluk has already
prepared several blocks of snow and that his cutting them out with a small
knife is but a perfunctory action. Mr. Rossman later shows Aguvaluk crawling
out of the top of his igloo, which is completely covered by the deep snow.
It strikes one that even a sticky
day in New York is better than camping on the edge of a frozen ocean. There is
a deal to be learned from this picture, and much credit is due Mr. Rossman for
his courage and energy in putting forth such a production. That he had to
follow a veritable masterpiece on the same subject does not diminish the
sterling worth of parts of this effort. •
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