Footage of Tibet
odd: label: General
content: HSFA 2008.16.1
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Saker, Richard Kenneth, 1908-1979
setName: label: See more items in
content: Richard Kenneth Saker films of Tibet
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 2 Film reels (44 minutes, color silent; 500 feet, 8mm)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1942-1943
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Human Studies Film Archives
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Film reels
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Footage shot by Richard Kenneth Saker, British Trade Agent located in Gyangtse, Tibet, 1941-1943.  Saker films women, children, and men in traditional dress including brightly decorated cloth, headgear, and jewelry.  Filmed from above is possibly the New Year celebration (Losar) in Lhasa with dance (men twirling in circles, masked elaborately dressed dancers and lay women), monks in red and saffron robes with yellow headgear, and processions.  In an unknown location horses, people and goods are unloaded from a barge and loaded with the same for crossing a body of water.  Military-looking men on horses are filmed trekking through snow  covered mountain.  Also filmed is a market with boys sporting boxing gloves slugging each other and possibly Chinese officials and Dalai Lama's palace.  In 1943 Saker filmed a trek through Western Tibet.  This footage includes nomadic groups and Indian traders (a group of adults and children dancing; a boy and man both "whirling dervishes;" men and women dancing; woman playing drum; various encampments; and sheep shearing); warm spring with mineral calcification; herd of wild horses; eroded structure and land mass; vast desert areas devoid of vegetation; crossing by precarious bridges on horse and foot rivers and streams; a town; the sacred lake of Manosawar and a three-day pilgrimage around the sacred mountain of Kailas.  Footage ends with fishing in northern India.