The full extent of "Man of Aran"’s deceptions was revealed at the 1978 Ethnographic Film Conference in Canberra, Australia. The conference had gathered, in part, to praise direct cinema which, in contrast to the classic tradition, promised a new level of realistic interpretation. This new form swept away staging and reconstruction to present a more accurate picture of the world. The debate was touched off by a screening of Flaherty’s "Man of Aran" followed by George Stoney’s just completed documentary exploration of Robert Flaherty’s "Man of Aran, How the Myth Was Made", and the resulting exchange was “tumultuous”. As James Roy MacBean says: “While appreciative of Flaherty’s poetic imagery Stoney had popped the lid off all the distortions and omissions in Flaherty’s highly romanticized depiction of life on the Aran Islands.” At the time, Stoney’s revelatory documentary had left many at the conference incensed at what they now saw as Flaherty’s blatant falsification of the life he had been purported to be documenting.