To the Happy Harbor

This documentary offered tantalizing glimpses of Afghanistan, which in 1929 was still one of the few heavily-populated areas in the world where the residents continued to live as they did in the Middle Ages. A progressive new leader named Amnullah tries to "Westernize" the country, meeting plenty of resistance from native reactionaries.

The 41-minute documentary directed by Vladimir Yerofeyev, is a 1928 Russian production. 'The Land of the Lion and Sun' has recorded different moments of Iranian people’s social life, the country’s general ambience, women’s clothing in the year 1921.

The film opens with an animated map. Starting off in Moscow, the center of the new empire, it leads through Samara and Orenburg to Tashkent, Osh, and further on to the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia. The crew is shown arriving in Osh, in present-day Kyrgyzstan, the expedition’s base. Camera records a picturesque bazaar, veiled women in the streets, and the expedition’s crew, horses, and camels, along with their heavy loads. After leaving Osh, the crew crosses the Taldyk Pass, and makes its first stop in the Alay Valley. Different elements of the trek are featured, including crossing mountain rivers, traversing snowy passes, and descending into valleys in bloom. In the Alay Valley the camera records the practices of the Kyrgyz nomads – constructing a tent, keeping goats, sheep, and horses, making dairy products, and working a traditional one-shuttle weaver’s loom. The community is presented as traditional and self-sufficient.

Vladimir Erofeev was a key figure in the development of the Soviet travelogue during the late 1920s. See for example Far Away in Asia [Daleko v Azii, 1931] and The Roof of the World: An Expedition to Pamir [Krysha mira: ekspeditsiia na Pamir, 1927].