f. w. murnau | tabu

in 1929, f.w. murnau invited leading documentarist robert flaherty to collaborate on a film to be shot on location in tahiti, a polynesian idyll in which murnau imagined a cast of island actors would provide a new form of authentic drama and offer rare insight into their “primitive” culture. the result of their collaboration was tabu, a film that depicts the details of indigenous island life to tell a mythical tale that is rich in the universal themes of desire and loss.