Film Forum Special

One night at Maasai Mara, Kenya, a young war­rior was dream­ing of a woman born in Africa three mil­lion years ago. In his dream she asked him to look for … read more

»Back then, the white man came, saw… and collected«. A cen­tu­ry ago the Torres Strait Islands in far north Aus­tralia were the famous sub­jects of the Cam­bridge Anthro­po­log­i­cal Expe­di­tion; yet … read more

© Sebastian Eschenbach

Robert Fla­her­ty’ film MAN OF ARAN (1934) is among the first ethno­graph­ic doc­u­men­taries. LOOKING FOR THE MAN OF ARAN inves­ti­gates how the Aran Islanders deal with Flaherty’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion of them­selves. What do they think about the film today? How do they remem­ber the film­ing and Robert Fla­her­ty as a person? Robert Fla­her­ty put Aran on the map. Nowa­days, 60 years later, Aran is one of the main tourist attrac­tions on the West Coast of Ire­land. How do the Aran Islanders use the image of Fla­her­ty cre­at­ed of the island nowa­days in mass tourism? 

The film is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of the former fishermen’s and farm­ers’ life on the isle of Aran, near the west coast of Ire­land. »MAN OF ARAN was the first … read more