A Night of Storytelling
Robert J. FLAHERTY
- Ireland
- 1935
- 12min
- G
- mp4
- black and white
Synopsis
A lost film until the 2013 discovery of a 35mm nitrate print at Harvard University, Flaherty’s 1935 short film Oidhche Sheanchais offers a disarming and fascinating distillation of his ardent belief in cinema as a mythopoeic art and folkloric tradition.
Review
A Night of Storytelling is the perfect postlude to Man of Aran. While recording the soundtrack to Man of Aran, Robert Flaherty invited the main characters, including the three families featured in the film, to London, and in the middle of the recording, he used the studio's fireplace to reenact an oral story from the Aran Islands. The story is about a fisherman boy who tames a wild sea spirit and finally returns home safely to his family. The family of The Man of Aran listens to the storyteller's skillful storytelling, a perfect example of the power of story and imagination for people who live with nature. A Night of Storytelling was long lost and then rediscovered by the Harvard Film Archive in 2013, and is believed to be the first Irish-language film.
Director
-
Robert J. FLAHERTY
Between Robert J. Flaherty’s major feature-length films, Nanook of the North (1922), Moana (1926), Man of Aran (1934), and Louisiana Story (1948), he made several smaller ones outside the epic man-against-nature format. More than 50 years after his death, Flaherty’s name still stands out among the most celebrated in motion picture history.