Adventurer turned documentarian Robert Flaherty spent a year living with Inhuit hunters in the harsh conditions of Canada’s Hudson Bay, and emerged with an enchanting, controversial film that’s perhaps the father of all documentaries.

All that’s wondrous and contradictory about cinema was there from the start, with its spotty record of truthfulness and ability to show us sights we’ve never seen before. Explorer-filmmaker Robert Flaherty’s classic is essential—inauthentic, yes, but a breathtaking, pioneering record of “reality.”