The live action version of Moana will be released this weekend. It's a remake of the 2016 animated movie. But the first Moana that Disney produced was 100 years ago, in 1926! The full-length silent film was directed by directed by Robert J. Flaherty, who did Nanook of the North in 1922. Flaherty spent a year in Samoa recording footage. He had envisioned an exciting tale of a sea monster, but instead found happy people living peacefully with no dangerous sea creatures that could pass for an antagonist. But the film was completed anyway.
Without a plot, Moana was not a hit. A critic coined the word "documentary" to describe the film in a review. However, the movie was not a documentary in the way we use the word today. Rather, it was a fictional collaboration between Flaherty and the Samoans to illustrate their world in a traditional and flattering way. Read about the first Moana at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)
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