“From Rice Fields to Rice Pudding” (0:38) is a silent, educational black-and-white film, part of a series called “Fox Hour / Everyday Geography,” presented by William Fox (0:11), founder of Fox Film, also known as Fox Studios. This film illustrates the entire procedure from the harvesting of rice from the fields, to how it is processed to become the white rice that we use to make rice pudding.

A woman prepares rice pudding from 1:00. She carefully pours rice from a box into a measuring cup as her young daughter watches. From 1:17 she uses a strainer to wash the rice with water. She pours the rice into a pan, stirring in some milk. She adds sugar at 1:54. Then they place it in the oven (2:14).

The film now takes us to see the fields from whence this rice comes (2:42). A reaping machine can be seen off in the distance (2:51). From 3:10, close-up footage of water being pumped through, flooding the fields. Rice grows best in very wet ground. A man uses a shovel to help drain out the water from 3:41.

At 4:09, a close-up of the unharvested rice still in their hulls. The grains of rice are at the top of the stalks, in covers called hulls.

Men use reaping machines to cut down the ripe rice (4:31), and this same machine can be used to tie the rice into bundles called sheaves (4:52).

Rice is threshed, much like wheat. At 5:30, a team of men shovels the sheaves into a canon-like machine, called a threshing machine. The sheaves are fed to the machine through a kind of conveyor belt (5:47), and the thresher blows out rice stalks and dust called “chaff” (6:29) forming rather large mounds.

A man uses a machine to pack the rice into sacks (6:56), and yet another man (7:12) sews them up by hand. These sacks are then loaded onto a truck (7:37). As they lleave the field, a man waves his cap goodbye at the camera (7:54).

The sacks of rice are loaded onto a ship, pulled up a plank by ropes, as a woman observes the process, holding a sheet of paper (8:11).

Once at the mill, the rice is poured out of the sacks to dry (8:30). Close-up of a pile of rice sacks at 8:35. Men move the rice around with shovels, perhaps to help along the drying process (8:40). There are more sacks to empty (8:46).

We see large machinery in the mill; a man comes over to inspect the grains (9:06). The machines shake the harvested rice, mechanically removing the hulls (9:16).

From 9:34 we see a final series of machines, processing and transporting the “white rice that we know.” A man pours the rice into another sack, measuring its weight with a balance scale (9:49) .

From 9:57, slowly panning long shots show the peaceful grandeur of the terraced rice fields. Closer views from 10:23.

Two men tread upon a mill wheel to flood the fields with water (10:57). They hang on to a small support structure as they power the wheel. A close-up of the water pumping out of the treadwheel at 11:06, and another close-up of the water flooding the rice plants at 11:13.

The men wipe the sweat off their faces (11:19), and the camera tilts down to reveal their bare feet still working hard.

Water buffaloes pull plows (11:49) through wet fields. The rice here is threshed by hand (12:20), men thrash the sheaves of rice into a circular structure to separate the grains from the chaff. At 12:49 a man transports bags of rice by wheelbarrow.

We return to the kitchen at 13:14. The daughter takes a peek inside the oven, then calls for her mother. The mother carefully retrieves the pan from the oven, and they inspect their rice pudding. From their happy reactions, we can understand that it must smell delightful (13:36).

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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