Robert Joseph Flaherty,
FRGS (; February 16, 1884 – July 23, 1951) was an American filmmaker who directed and produced the first commercially successful feature-length
documentary film,
Nanook of the North (1922). The film made his reputation and nothing in his later life fully equaled its success, although he continued the development of this new genre of
docufiction, e.g. with
Moana (1926), set in the
South Seas, and
Man of Aran (1934), filmed in Ireland's
Aran Islands.