Robert Flaherty spent nearly two years recording life on the Aran Islands, three remote landmasses off the western coast of Ireland. Here, islanders brace for a harsh existence: violent storms ravage the rocky coast, and nothing grows on the mineral terrain. Flaherty’s film follows a husband and wife, and their young son and baby, who are bound to a natural world that is stark and dangerous. Waves threaten to pull them out to sea as they clamber up the cliffs with provisions brought by boat. The family cultivates their own soil to nurture a small harvest of crops. One of the earliest documentary feature films, and part of Flaherty’s canon documenting ways of life, Man of Aran employs careful staging to render arresting everyday scenes on film. ST