Production :
Kunstkamera, musée d’ethnographie et d’anthropologie Pierre-le-Grand de l’Académie des sciences de Russie, Saint-Pétersbourg (Russie)
Plot synopsis
In 1929 and 1930, Georgui and Ekaterina Prokofiev, both anthropologists, close to Franz Boas and Vladimir Bogoras, went on a two-year field trip to the Nenets territory and decided to document their work with a 16mm camera. Conceived as “cinematographic chronicles,” these images are a unique testimony to the daily life, know-how and practices of reindeer herding during the Soviet collectivization policy. Excerpts from the Prokofievs’ diary place these film archives in the context of the birth of visual anthropology in the Soviet Arctic.
