Jews on the Land
About Jews on the Land
Abram Room's short documentary shows Jewish colonists on Black Sea and Crimean land. They build houses, dig a well, and farm. The English Wikipedia ties the film to an OZET campaign and to communes set up on land described as abandoned. Vladimir Mayakovsky, Room, and Viktor Shklovsky are the writers. Sovkino released it.
Cast & crew
More about Jews on the Land
Filming was in Krasnodar Krai, with some scenes near Yevpatoria in Crimea. Wikipedia names Albert Queen as cameraman and Lilya Brik as assistant director. Wikidata gives 17 minutes and the year 1927, with no composer listed.
Themes
Background
OZET backed Jewish agricultural settlement in Crimea and the Black Sea region in the late 1920s, and this short was made inside that campaign.
Making
Lilya Brik worked as assistant director. Mayakovsky shared the writing credit with Room and Shklovsky.
Reviews
Yan Levchenko wrote that the film records an ethnographic settlement experiment attempted in the USSR twenty years before a Jewish state built on the kibbutz.
Look
Albert Queen is the cameraman named on the English Wikipedia.
Notes
- The English page also gives the title The Jew and the Earth.
- Yan Levchenko described the film as a chronicle of a settlement experiment in the USSR twenty years before a Jewish state organized around the kibbutz.
- The production is linked to a late-1920s Soviet press campaign against antisemitism.
- The catalog adds the concrete tasks: houses, a well, and farming.
Scenes
- Colonists are shown putting up houses, digging a well, and working the land.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1927 Евреи на земле.webm)
