A Century of Filmic Images of Chukotka: From the First Cinematographic Expeditions to Siberian Indigenous Cinema
This article examines the filmic representation of Chukotka and its inhabitants from the earliest days of the moving image to the films distributed on the Internet. This century of filmic images of Chukotka can be divided into three main moments. The first is that of the beginning of silent cinema, when Chukotka attracted operators from various horizons in search of spectacular images of a faraway world and its “exotic” inhabitants. From the advent of Bolshevik power, and more particularly during the Stalinist period, a repertoire of globally homogeneous motifs was established around the staging of the liberation of the Chukchi by the authorities. The last moment, that of an indigenous cinema of Chukotka, begins in the 1970s with the shift of the Chukchi writer Yuri Rytkheu to the screenplay, giving birth to a Siberian cinema that will truly flourish in the post-Soviet period. This long-term analysis allows us to bring to light the ruptures and continuities in the regime of representation, i.e. the repertoire of images that interact with each other at a given historical moment, from Chukotka to the screen. It also makes it possible to question in its complexity the long Soviet moment in which the natives of Chukotka, often generically presented as Chukchi, are particularly present on the screen and in which, thanks to the Soviet policy of promotion of minorities, one of its representatives is able to pass behind the camera.