Robert and Frances Flaherty: A Documentary Life, 1883–1922

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

This biography of documentary filmmaking icons Robert and Frances
Flaherty aims “not only to rectify the traditional approach to the
Flaherty biography but also to address the forty-year hiatus in
biographical studies of Robert and Frances.” The book covers Robert
Flaherty’s previously overlooked explorations in the North as a miner
and prospector, and includes an expanded review of his accomplishments
as the documentary filmmaker of the classic Nanook of the North.

Christopher’s text is supplemented with extensive verbatim entries
from the diaries of both Robert and Frances, almost 50 pages of
endnotes, a comprehensive bibliography, and 48 carefully selected
black-and-white archival photographs of Flaherty family members, Inuit
and Cree, film locations, solitary buildings, wrecked ships, and sledge
dogs, among other subjects.

Christopher’s skills as a biographer are reflected in the fleshed-out
portraits he presents of his subjects. Robert and Frances Flaherty is
both a work of careful scholarship and a commendably readable biography.