For those of you who’ve nev­er heard of Nanook, Thursday night’s screen­ing at the Film Archive is unmiss­able.

Widely con­sidered the first fea­ture length doc­u­ment­ary ever made (shot in 1922) it’s an excep­tion­al account of Inu­it life on the ice.

Using tra­di­tion­al meth­ods (includ­ing killing large fish by bit­ing the back of their heads/necks? whatever you call that bit at the top) and hanging out with his “wives” in the harshest of climes, this snap­shot of Nanook’s life is even more poignant as he died two years later, lost in a snow storm.

The film later went on to be dis­cred­ited for “set­ting-up” tra­di­tion­al hunt­ing meth­ods, rais­ing inter­est­ing ques­tions which fit per­fectly with the cur­rent mediagal­lery exhib­i­tion by Wel­ling­ton artist Sarah Jane Par­ton.

She’ll be per­form­ing a response to the film live with the music­al back up of Henderson/Beban/Crewdson

THIS THURSDAY, 7PM, AT THE FILM ARCHIVE
TICKETS $8 / $6

Film Archive events cal­en­dar