Travelogue films showing indigenous life in the interwar period, filmed by the British traveller, linguist, spy and author Reginald Teague Jones OBE, who changed his name to Sinclair after his alleged involvement in the massacre of Bolshevik commissars from Baku in the Caucasus in September 1918.

Overview of market scene, identified in shot list as the Arab quarter in Old Haifa; men in fezzes sit together, taking drinks at coffee house. Some street scenes. Women ascending the Mount of Olives. Kidron Valley: tomb of Absolom, Bnei Hazir tomb and tomb of Zecariah. Panning views of Jerusalem from Mount of Olives. People with donkeys and produce passing through the Lion’s Gate (erroneously identified as Herod’s Gate in original acquisition file shot list). Jerusalem street scenes: Arabs in various styles of traditional and modern dress, several persons who may be lepers (?), brief glimpse of an Orthodox Jew (and an Eastern European Jew, carrying a tyre?), food sellers and goods traders, women, children, brief glimpse of a Palestine Police officer (?), etc. Hookah smokers, domino players. (Some shots appear to be from the initial Old Haifa sequence of market scenes). Interesting shot of a young man, perhaps a professional letter reader (?), who sits on a small cushioned seat reading to an older man who crouches beside him, smoking a cigarette and listening intently. Shots of Mary’s Well, Nazareth, with water gatherers. Bethlehem, Church of the Nativity: sequence of many people in traditional Christian Arab and modern dress leaving the church through the Door of Humility. Further street scenes. Shot of herds of goats and sheep around the ruin of an ancient well, location unclear. Men, women and children passing the camera with heavily loaded donkeys (original shot list indicates this is possibly in Jordan, on the road to Amman?). Armed horsemen and man on camel (shot list: ‘Jebel Druse horsemen’, Jordan). Children and women with donkeys (shot list: ‘Gypsies on the march’?). A vulture (Gyps fulvus). Stone bridge, location unknown (absent from shot list: possibly Malta?). Shepherds and flocks on the shores of a body of water, location unknown.

Notes

NOTES: Viewing copy (and reel?) are missing several scenes from original shot list, which appears to correspond only up to the sequences of Jebel Druze horsemen, and which in any case does not correspond to the film with complete accuracy. Missing scenes, marked as such on photocopy in acquisition file, are as follows: ‘Halt in desert motor convoy (3 feet). Bedouin (3 feet). Bedouin encampment (black tents) and some inmates. Close up studies of some very interesting native types (24 feet).’ More importantly, at various points on the viewing copy (and reel?) several sections of the film are repeated in reversed view: these sections are mostly old Jerusalem street scenes, although the vulture and bridge also appear twice, the second time ‘back to front’.

Catalogue entry by Dr Francis Gooding, AHRC Colonial Film Database 2010.