Fact and Fiction in ‘Northerns’ and Early ‘Arctic’ Films

• Main Author: Potter, Russell A.
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2015
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694174.003.0009

This chapter discusses the very first Arctic-set films, including the Danish Polar Bear Hunt (1906) for Nordisk, and situates burgeoning American feature film production as a continuum of pre-cinematic practices that presented the unknown Arctic, and its populations, through staged and recognisably fictional sets and exhibition modes. As these practices developed into narrative French and Hollywood silent cinema by Méliès Porter, the malleability of the Arctic region continued to be made evident through location substitution. Potter examines the early productions of companies such as Selig Polyscope and Pathé to trace the ways in which the Arctic ‘Northern’ became a staple of early cinema, and the way in which these early films blended fact and fiction. He furthermore addresses the production and early circulation of the Nell Shipman films Back to God’s Country (1919) and God’s Country and the Woman (1916), based on the writings of James Oliver Curwood.