This silent film, entitled “Inside Russia: Siberia” was produced by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films in 1948, and focuses on the area of Siberia around Irkutsk city. The materials shown depict the lives of Buryat people in the modern city, as well as in the countryside – as hunters, herders, and workers. The mainstay agricultural animals depicted are sheep, yak and reindeer. We see city scenes – people playing tennis, soccer, and working, in the postwar Irkutsk, as well as an shot of a research institute – “Ginzoloto”, which played a key rôle in the postwar Soviet re-industrialization, discovery and use of the mineral ores, crucial for the nuclear industry. The movie shows the traditional culture and crafts of the Buryat people, particularly their pipe-smoking tradition, and the belief systems they practice – an animist ceremony at the local shaman’s house and a Lamaist Buddhism prayer at an unidentified dazan-monastery.

The film starts with a couple of mounted cattle wranglers herding sheep.

1:00 Man and at a horse-driven cart crossing a stream, a girl in a traditional costume

1:05 A couple of GAZ-AA driving on a muddy road, telegraph lines in the distance

1:18 Yak herd and a local woman-wrangler on a horse

1:30 driving the herd through a village.

1:40 Children playing soccer/football in Irkutsk.

1:51 The entrance arch to the Russian State Gold Processing Company, in Irkutsk, founded in 1870, which was transformed into the Siberian Semi-Precious Metals Institute in 1930 and later – in 1932, into “Ginzoloto” and became the Research Institute of Gold and Associated Metals in 1946. The building shown in the movie existed from 1870 to 1946 and was demolished and replaced by a new construction, housing the same research institute.

2:00 Women replacing the newspapers in the local public newspaper stand, Soyuzpechat

2:10 New condos being built in the background of the old single-storey wooden temporary shacks.

2:17 A man and a woman brick-layers, building a condo wall

2:26 Local teenager volunteers (“Young pioneers”) or vocational school pupils carrying bricks

2:38 A soccer match

2:47 A person, playing “gorodki”, a traditional Russian game, similar to horseshoes

2:53 A woman and a man playing tennis doubles

3:15 Fishermen on the lake Baïkal. Men and women rowing and spreading the nets.

3:57 Fishermen pulling out the nets

4:06 taking out the fish.

4:10 Pulling the boat out of the water

4:18 Women, pulling the boat out of the water with an improvised cabestan

4:34 A prospector, panning for gold

4:54 Gold prospectors, men and women, digging out mud from a creek with a man-powered shovel

5:12 Unloading the gold-containing mud from a wheelbarrow into a sluice, to be washed5:18 Washing the mud

5:22 Prospectors having a break, reading, cooking and making tea.

5:52 A settled Buryat family, making flour

6:11 A Buryat woman sewing on the ubiquitous Singer sewing machine

6:18 Another woman, sitting by her side and hand sewing coats, two toddlers watching her sewing

6:26 The cameraman questioning an elder

6:41 And elderly, probably a traditional Buryat tobacconist-shaman, called a darkhan, helping a woman start a pipe

6:44 Woman smoking a pipe and a younger woman, smoking a cigarette – pipe.

6:57 A family Nomadic reindeer herders with their reindeer

7:05 A reindeer

7:11 Woman with an infant in an over-the-shoulder sling baby bed

7:15 A baby and a young male reindeer, chewing up a piece of his bed clothing

7:31 An elderly woman milking reindeer,

7:40 A man saddling up a reindeer, and then teaching a boy

7:44 to ride it.

7:48 Leading a herd.

8:06 bringing fish home from a fishing trip

8:19 Trimming reindeers horns for the summer

8:32 A reindeer fawn wants to drink milk

8:33 Household goods are made from birch bark and reindeer skins

8:40 A young woman softening a reindeer skin, while another one sews a birch box.

9:33 A visit to the shaman.

9:41 Elderly women and men praying

9:49 boys and girls praying

9:58 Drinking a medicinal concoction

10:13 A lamastery (a Buddhist Lamaist monastery). Possibly Aginsky Dazan, Gusinoozerski Dazan or Hoimorsky Dazan/

10:17 Monks going into the lamastery

10:23 Lamas setting up the horns (dungchen), then blowing them

10:52 Lamaist prayer ceremony with music and processions.

11:18 Turning the prayer wheel

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com