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Nanook of the North is a 1922 American silent film written and directed by Robert J. Flaherty, which depicts the life of an Inuit family. From 1910, Flaherty worked for Sir William Mackenzie searching for mineral deposits along the Hudson Bay for the Canadian Northern Railway, and in 1913 he decided to start filming the lands and people of the area, using a glass-plate still camera and movie camera. He then spent 1914 and 1915 shooting hours of film of Inuit life, but his work was lost in 1916 when he dropped a cigarette onto the original camera negative. After four years of raising money, including from French fur company Revillon Frères, Flaherty returned to filming in 1920–21. As a main character, Flaherty chose the hunter Allakariallak. The film was produced in full collaboration with the Inuit. In 1989, Nanook of the North was among the first group of twenty-five films selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.Film credit: Robert J. Flaherty