Nanook of the North

The first feature-length documentary and still one of the most famous ever made. Robert Flaherty spent years among the Inuit of the Hudson Bay region and returned with the story of Nanook — really a hunter named Allakariallak — and his family struggling through an Arctic winter. Flaherty staged and romanticized much of it: "Nanook's" family was cast for the film, and harpoons were used after rifles had already arrived. Critics have argued about that for a century, but the film invented the documentary feature and remains gripping survival cinema. The film is in the public domain.