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.

Locations unidentified: peasants cutting corn; children wave and gesticulate at the camera; street scenes; elderly (Arab?) men sit in doorway; diver in heavy suit hauled up to the surface by his comrades in large rowing boat (Italy?); coastal town; violently smoking volcano (Italy?); ocean liner; sea views at evening; market and street scenes. Rabat, Morocco: the Sultan of Morocco ‘on his way to Friday prayers’ (shot list) with a guard of honour and cavalry escort. Further shot of smoking volcano, from different position? Military vessel visible in sea below. Ship-board shots of very rough seas; ship pitching dramatically (subsequent sequences indicate this may be a trans-Atlantic crossing). The Caribbean. Various brief shots, identified in shot list as the following locations: Bridgetown, Barbados; Trinidad (view to Venezuela); La Guiara, Venezuala; Paramilla (?). Shot of three-toed sloth. Panama canal: ‘lock gates in operation’ (shot list), ship being pulled from towpath by small rail engines. Canoes being pulled ashore: location identified as Jamaica. Sugar mill in action. Barbados: beach scenes. Shots of standing sugar cane and cane labourers. Antigua: numerous small boats (shot-list: ‘bum-boats’). Manatees being fed by hand. Still shots of forest, mule cart; identified in shot list as British Guiana.

Notes

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