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.

On board a steamer: Indian crewmen hard at work (shot list: ‘hauling up gangway’). Market scenes, Bombay; fishermen throwing their nets from the harbour wall. Harbour scenes in Mangalore; traditional vessels; fishermen coming alongside boat in small canoes with fish to sell; purchased fish are pulled up in a bucket. Shots of a boat attempting to land in heavy swell (shot list: ‘monsoon swell’). Further harbour scenes, location identified as ‘Marmugao, Portuguese Indian’. Roadside shots in India (‘Grand Trunk Road’). Buffalo and ox carts and wagons on dusty road. Buffaloes wallowing. Street scenes (location identified as Madras); musicians, ox wagons, market scenes. Roadside scenes (‘traffic on Howrah bridge, Calcutta’). Karachi harbour: sailing craft (similar shots also appear in MYY 110). Rural scenes in Sind: ploughing, drawing water, men with dancing bears. European man (Sinclair?) drinking from fresh coconut. Official scenes: arrival of Viceroy Reading in Bombay amid pomp and great ceremony. Picketing of Viceroy’s visit - shot list ‘First recorded case of peaceful picketing by Congress Party in Bombay’. Shot of musicians, Karachi, followed by scene of cattle and driver, perhaps drawing water from well? Final shots of a magician, conjuring a rooted plant from beneath a sheet and manhandling a snake.

Notes

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