Here in historical videos, you can see how Yhyakh (Ысыах in Russian), the Yakut national holiday, was celebrated in the 1960s. For the long period, the Soviets prohibited the Yakuts to hold its traditional summer event, but eventually, since 1941, allowed.

Yhyakh is the celebration of the summer solstice. Dedicated to the spirits of Ajyy and nature revival. Followed with the rising sun worship ceremonies, abundant food, kumis (also spelled kumiss, koumiss or kumys; it’s the horse milk) drinking, national sports games, horse races.

Further, please, find the second historical video. Read the rest of this entry…

Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is featured in the 1st episode of BBC2′s Arctic with Bruce Parry. It’s called in a short way, “Siberia”.

In this episode, Bruce Parry is celebrating Ysyakh, the Yakut summer solstice celebration, in Central Yakutia and traveling to Even reindeer camps in the Verkhoyansk Range.

Finally, here is the video. It’s more like a teaser. Unfortunately, the full version is not available for the Russian area yet. But… What a fun clip! Hilarious!

Below see the second vid as well.

Read the rest of this entry…

Roman Sofronov is a Yakutsk-based fellow, who has his own YouTube channel with great videos displaying the life in Yakutia, the biggest Siberian|Russian region.

He’s got great black-and-white 8mm home videos of children made in an ordinary Yakutian|Siberian village called Ytyk-Kyuel’ in the Soviet time. Fascinating flashbacks! Enjoy the history of Yakutia.

Read the rest of this entry…

This is one of fourteen short films made by Martin Heylen for the Belgian National TV Channel. The episode depicts how ice roads on the Lena River are used and what type of road maintaining works is conducted in winter. In the video you can see, why road workers pour waters on ice, why they strew snow on the surface and etc.

Saying a lot of thanks to Olga Monastyreva for her sharing the link with us. Olga lives in Belgia and she reports that Martin Heylen is pretty famous in his country and his TV Show about Siberia, including Yakutia, was broadcasted on a major TV Channel in the course of one month. Later it was repeated at requests of viewers. Moreover, Martin received a national TV award for those series.

Enjoy a film, though it is in the Flemish language.

See photographs of the Even reindeer herders taken by anthropologist Florian Stammler in the northern part of the Verkhoyansk mountains in Yakutia, Siberia/Russia.

Florian Stammler is one of a few antropologists, who mainly studies the peoples of the Russian Arctic. He used to lecture in Cambridge. Now he teaches at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland and is the coordinator of the anthropology research team at its Arctic Centre (http://www.arcticcentre.org/anthropology). He has been to Yakutia many times. This time, a couple of weeks ago, he and his wife Anna traveled to the Eveno-Bytantaisky region with Bruce Parry and his IndusFilms documentary team (wrote about them previously). Read the rest of this entry…

Bruce Parry (with a tripod) and his team in Yakutsk, Yakutia/Siberia

Hurray! Bruce Parry with his IndusFilm crew is in the Siberian town of Yakutsk! What’s he doing here?

Bruce Parry (born 17 March 1969, in Hythe, Hampshire, England) is a former Royal Marine instructor who is now a TV presenter and adventurer, known particularly for the documentary programme series Tribe (known as Going Tribal in the United States), co-produced by the BBC and the Discovery Channel. Resource: Wiki.

I met Bruce Parry two days ago on Lenin Avenue in Yakutsk. Actually he and his team arrived early, on June 17th. They have already visited a village near the town, went for two celebrations of Ysyakh, Yakut national holiday. One was held in Gorny ulus (three hours by a car from Yakutsk) and Megino-Kangalassky region (just in the front of Yakutsk on the opposite bank of the Lena River). Yesterday they departed for Sakkyryr to travel with Even reindeer herders. On the day of the meeting, they visited Epl Diamonds’ diamonds-cutting and jewelry’s factories and drove around the downtown shooting general views of the city.

First, I would love to tell the story of how his arrival happened to be possible. Read the rest of this entry…

The Winter Road Documentary Poster

This is the video preview of Nikolay Evstifeev’s documentary “THE WINTER ROAD. The Land of Fierce…” about the sever work in Siberia’s Yakutia. Here you can see how hard ordinary people’s work can be in the toughest part of Siberia.

The documentary film won The Best Directing Award at The 17th Saint Anna Film Festival and The Best Cinematography Award at The 29th VGIK Film Festival. Btw, Anton Safronov was a camera man.

The documentary is about Yakutia, the sever land of truckers, gold miners, hunters, oil & other industry workers. Extreme conditions are revealed in every capture. Survival at minus 50 degrees Celsius, ice roads on rivers, people’s attitude to nature, wild life… and PEOPLE without false manners and any compromises.

Young documentary filmmakers traveled winter roads in Yakutia, Siberia/Russia. They met many ordinary workers, who appeared to be real heroes of daily life.

“This film is very sincere! This is a real big documentary!” said Michael Porechenkov, the chairman of the 29th VGIK Film Festival jury, a famous Russian actor. Read the rest of this entry…