NATIVE SONGS
1948 · National Archives and Records Administration (via FedFlix)
Finding Not a federal work
Not asserted: its local identifier places it in NARA record group 242 (National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized), which holds material made outside the federal government; the body named in the record, War Department. Military Intelligence Division, is the custodian that seized or received it, not its maker. Whatever its copyright position, it is not a work of the United States Government under 17 U.S.C. 105.
The record names a state or local body. 17 U.S.C. 105 covers only the United States Government, and state and local governments may hold copyright in their works.
- Creating body, as recorded
- War Department. Military Intelligence Division
- National Archives Identifier
- 44142 (local identifier 242-MID-5181)
- Internet Archive item
- gov.archives.arc.44142 (uploader's licence mark: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/)
The record
The Internet Archive item's description, as transcribed by the uploader from the source archive's record. Check it against the National Archives catalog entry linked above.
National Archives and Records Administration NATIVE SONGS War Department. Military Intelligence Division. (08/26/1918 - 04/19/1947) ARC Identifier 44142 / Local Identifier 242-MID-5181. SUMMARY: Made in Byelorussia (White Russia), 1949, this is a musical film featuring native songs and dances, sung and performed by young people. Reel 1: A Shepherd plays a flute, flowers open, a boy and a girl appear among the trees. The girl does a waltz of spring in the pastoral setting. Other couples appear and a group of girls sing a lively song to an accordion. Afterwards they all walk into "the cultural park" under an arch decorated with Lenin's and Stalin's pictures. Reel 2: After dancing the polka, the couples drift in rowboats. Sailors dance on deck and wave to the girls on shore. A girl on shore sings a sad song as boys go off to the army. On their return the sailor and soldiers are greeted with flowers. Reel 3: Various dances at the station: group dancing, solo, comic dances, etc. In the evening two fellows out strolling meet a couple. In dance pantomime, they lure her away from her accordion-playing boy friend, then fight over her. At the end of the dance she goes back to her boy friend as the two fellows move on. In the morning a group of young girls rise from the flowers in the field, sing and dance. Reel 4: A girls sings while she wields a sickle. In the background, girls cut wheat. Before a statue of Stalin the girls hold bundles of grain in symbolic pose. A winter dance follows with snow and sliding down an incline. As a finale, groups sing and form pyramids under huge pictures of Stalin and Lenin. Thousands wave banners in a stadium. Made possible by a donation from Veronica Alzalde.