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.

Sailing craft, location identified in shot list as ‘outside Karachi’; a man climbs the mast in order to furl the sail. Streets scenes in Karachi, including shot of a man playing an unusual violin-like stringed instrument. Shot of camel-drawn carts in desert terrain. Shot of an Imperial Airways De Havilland biplane (reg. G-EMBX); a European man poses for camera in doorway. Long sequence of aerial shots of varied and sometimes spectacular terrain. Scene of plane refuelling; further aerial shots of mountainous desert coastline with settlements, some quite large. Aerial sequences end with shots of city located on large river (Baghdad?) (These sequences appear to record a journey by air from India to Iraq, possibly by way of the Persian Gulf?). Kazimein, Iraq: street scenes: market stalls, barber. Cars fording a stream. Peasants and shepherds outside Mosul, followed by Mosul street and market scenes. Sequences outside Mosul: Camel herders in barren desert terrain; a horse laden with wooden ploughs; sheep and shepherds; shots of a small bridge (identified shot list as ‘pre-Roman’).

Notes

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