Ethnocultural Communities of the North as Shown in Ethnocinema “Coast of the Chukchi Sea” by Grigory Smirnitsky: Shooting History

Abstract

Purpose. History of visual anthropology in Russia is full of big names, heroic expeditions and classic films. Based on research and pursuing artistic goals, production of ethnographic films was also part of a grand Soviet experiment on creating a unique national identity. Soviet authorities used popular “cultural films” as a means of bringing together the peoples of the new Soviet Union on the screen. This article deals with exploring the film-image of the culture of the Chukchi on the example of a classic documentary film shot by Grigory Smirnitsky, a pioneer of the Soviet visual anthropology. The film was a result of the Chukotka expedition conducted by the film group of the Soyuzkino factory under the leadership of A. Litvinov, one of pioneers and icons of the national ethnographic cinema. The film “Coast of the Chukchi Sea”, the main result of the film expedition which has survived up to our days, was created by an A. Litvinov’s assistant, a young director and scriptwriter G. Smirnitsky. Due to the specifics of silent movies, this film is a kind of a cinematic text as it consists of approximately the same number of frames and text captions alternating in the narrative. In this regard, an effective method for analyzing this film applied in this article is its decoding, a «translation» into a text format. Result. The resultant film-text allows us to identify and analyze, on the one hand, the features of the screen image of the Chukchi culture of the early twentieth century. On the other hand, we analyzed the basis of the specific creative method of the director-researcher. G. Smirnitsky’s creativity is a perfect example of how a film potential can be used as a form of research cognition. The method discovered by the director in the expedition helps to combine research and documentary elements into a film so that the film could convey not only some information about the events shown, but also their figurative and emotional context. Conclusion. Based on the analysis of visual, textual and archival materials, we come to the conclusion that this documentary film phenomenon is a valuable historical source. Studying Soviet ethnographic cinema, including the film “Coast of the Chukchi Sea”, enriches the source base of modern science with audiovisual ethnographic materials and equips scientists with proven scientific and creative methods that could be used in modern research practice.