Robert Flaherty and John Grierson both were pioneers of documentary movies and lend immense credibility to the root of the documentary filmmaking. Though both are equally important in the documentary cinema landscape, Flaherty is known as the first “father of documentary.” In the classic documentary “Nanook of the North,” the producer of the film Flaherty has attempted to showcase the struggles of an Intuit hunter, Nanook braving the brutal cold conditions at the Hudson Bay region in Canada. In the travelogue he captures the intimacy and communication between the people of the primitive culture in Canada and their indigenous life, and work of the native transcending the picturesque journey to fill a realistic image of the details of the lives and challenges of people thriving in parts of the cold frontier. The film appealed to the audience in Hollywood strongly as it was a source of entertainment and provided them with eye catching images representing the process of human involvement and the natural things of their daily lives. While Grierson applauded the work of Flaherty and acknowledged him as the father of documentary cinema, his approach and style of presenting social and political issues was more dramatized but in a meaningful way. The idea was to showcase situations that are based on the roles of communication and its patterns in modern society.

In “Night Mail,” John Grierson aimed at bringing forth to the audiences’ eye from all parts of the earth to the story, his own story, of what was happening under his nose…the drama of the door-step.” While Flaherty’s representation of the primitive age characters and their way of life in the documentary was more light-hearted, Grierson delved into serious social issues of the modern society. Flaherty often portrayed close-ups of a group of people far from an ancient era in an amusing, and playful manner using staged scenes. He has exhibited a similar approach in the Nanook of the North in 1922 which has no voiceover, but permits the audience to go on an exploration of the intuit culture and its primitive yet human habits in an entertaining way. The movie received unparalleled recognition and some amount of criticism from modern and realistic cinema producers such as Grierson who slammed it for being regressive, fictional and an exaggeration of the truth. If Griersom would have produced the movie Nanook it would have outlined the social issues. This representation would make the documentary more political in the context of modern society rather than focusing on an earlier period.

In “Night Mail,” Grierson depicts the true account of the life process and difficulties of postal service working class chronicled at the time of the Great Depression in Britain. The movie is more issue oriented and less impersonal about its characters that focusses on generating a mass awakening to deal with social and economic problems during the Great Depression through their skills. Flaherty ignored the social aspect of a culture and the socio-political context of the struggles of its protagonist. His style of filmmaking in Nanook was in capturing the beauty, essence, personal account of kinship of an ancient world. John Grierson on the other hand changed the spectrum of documentary cinema by aiming to address contemporary issues with a more realistic and non-fictional approach rather than making films for pleasure which is Flaherty’s style and genre.

Both filmmakers have contributed significantly to a realistic representation of two different cultures in time and have shown techniques and examples of creating a balance between realism and social issues and a touch of joy and intimacy among people and cultures in documentary films today. Both films however depict realistic inner workings of both the societies for audiences to view. In “Night Mail,” the scenes like the bags of mail exiting and entering the trains, Grierson highlights the details of the postal service.  In a similar fashion, Flaherty’s scenes gives realistic insights into prehistoric Arctic culture and lifestyle such as igloo construction, hunting, fishing, etc.

I feel that filmmakers today can contribute aspects of both Grierson and Flaherty’s techniques to teach the audience about a social issue while also capturing a personal account and intimate culture of the scene. Grierson and Flaherty have contributed an important balance of aspects to filmmaking in which modern day artists still use today.