"The Wedding of Palo" (originally "Palos Brudefærd") (1934) is not technically a silent, but it is a film made in Greenland in the form of a docu-drama (though really only a drama with equally as much cultural anthropological/ethnographic feature) which has only a muted overlay of speaking featuring the natural speech of the arctic tribe studied by famed Danish explorer and anthropologist Knud Rasmussen. Nevertheless, the film plays much like a silent, and much of the film IS silent. The "plot" features two young men vying for the hand of the same woman. The "vying" ends up being done by "singing" satirical/sarcastic/insulting rhythmic words, aimed by one man against the other, then the other back against his "foe", though one of the men pulls a knife and... The story really then begins...
What attracted me most was that, though the "antics" and the doings were staged, the rowing of the kayaks in very obviously treacherous waters(!) was simply amazing!! Watching the kayaks and the umyaks being maneuvered in general was quite a treat, and though an obvious part of the lives of these people, is alien to most landlubbers in the middle of the States. A bear hunt also occurs among ice floes from a degrading glacier, and the filming is striking and beautifully done. In today's world, you may pull for the bear...
Photographed much like a documentary, the roughness and toughness of the whole (perhaps seemingly antiquated to many modern viewers) actually accentuates the filmography of this early "study", much in the mode of "Nanook of the North", "Eskimo", "The Silent Enemy", and others of the same ilk made in the same time period.
Absolutely worth the watch. This is on the "Nanook of the North" Blu-Ray with other shorts included besides this and "Nanook", released by Flicker Alley. Directed by German director Friedrich Dalsheim.
What attracted me most was that, though the "antics" and the doings were staged, the rowing of the kayaks in very obviously treacherous waters(!) was simply amazing!! Watching the kayaks and the umyaks being maneuvered in general was quite a treat, and though an obvious part of the lives of these people, is alien to most landlubbers in the middle of the States. A bear hunt also occurs among ice floes from a degrading glacier, and the filming is striking and beautifully done. In today's world, you may pull for the bear...
Photographed much like a documentary, the roughness and toughness of the whole (perhaps seemingly antiquated to many modern viewers) actually accentuates the filmography of this early "study", much in the mode of "Nanook of the North", "Eskimo", "The Silent Enemy", and others of the same ilk made in the same time period.
Absolutely worth the watch. This is on the "Nanook of the North" Blu-Ray with other shorts included besides this and "Nanook", released by Flicker Alley. Directed by German director Friedrich Dalsheim.