10 Movies You Didn’t Know Were Responsible For Game-Changing Innovations
7. The First Documentary - Nanook Of The North
Films up to this point had become an established form of entertainment, 1922's Nanook Of The North added yet another use for the film medium: to educate the masses. This would revolutionise the way in which we learn and observe the world and society as a whole.
It's argued that Arnold Fanck's 1920 Das Wunder Des Scheeschuhs (The Wonder Of Snowshoes) is the first documentary, but it's not a documentary in the traditional sense as it's just uninterrupted footage with no explanatory narration or title cards, so it's only really informative if you know what the gist is, not a very good education tool. In contrast, Nanook has title cards to contextualise footage.
The film depicts the lives of Canada's indigenous Inuit people, their means of survival, obtaining food and day to day lives. It's pretty accurate although some scenes were staged for dramatic or comedic effect, but documentary films still do this, it allows the audience to fully connect with the subject matter. And imagine Super Size Me with no humour... grim.