Refer to RG-60.4679 on Film ID 2847 for the description and better visual quality of the first seven minutes of this film footage. 01:08:02 Dr. Yefim Lubarsky, vice-president of the Agro-Joint, presents flowers to Pauline Baerwald Falk and Evelyn Morrissey. The women smile at the camera. Scene of a grassy field shot from a moving car. Scenes showing one or more of the Agro-Joint colonies visited by the Falks and Evelyn Morrissey: two oxen yoked together beside a car; LS of a young boy running down a road beside a long line of houses; a woman carries two buckets of water. The next scenes may be in the colony of Lunacharka. Evelyn Morrissey writes in her book that the group visited a flock of merino sheep kept by the colonists. The footage shows shepherds herding sheep. One shepherd hooks a sheep with his crook and allows Dr. Lubarsky to pull off some wool for inspection. 01:10:06 Pauline Falk rinses her hands in water from a large pipe. Dr. Lubarsky stands beside her. Panning shot of a group of Agro-Joint colonists. Dr. Lubarsky talks to a woman; Pauline Falk talks and laughs with a young man. These scenes may have been shot in Simferopol, which was the group's last stop before they moved on to Yalta. 01:10:26 LS of the Black Sea and the roads that wind down to the coast. Shot of a synagogue or a church in Yalta (?). CU of a local man. Shots of ships in a busy port. View of people waving to a departing ship, shot from the ship. This could be the SS Abkhazia, on which the Falks and Evelyn Morrissey sailed from Batoum to Odessa on June 10th, 1935. Views of the shore from the ship and of people on the ship, including Pauline Falk. Back on land, Pauline Falk smiles at the camera and stands up through the sunroof of a car. A shot of seagulls and waves crashing on the rocky coastline. Extreme CUs of Pauline Falk reclining on a rock. More shots of the landscape and the coast, followed by Pauline Falk posing playfully for the camera.
Pauline Baerwald Falk was the daughter of Paul Baerwald, chairman of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. This trip doubled as the honeymoon of Pauline and Myron S. Falk, Jr. Evelyn Morrissey was the Assistant Treasurer of the Agro-Joint. She wrote a book about the trip called"Jewish Workers and Farmers in the Crimea and Ukraine"
Agro-joint colonies in the Crimea
This footage was shot in Kodachrome but transferred to video in black and white in order to obtain the most image possible. The original color film is very faded. The first 7.5 minutes of this footage can be found in better quality on Film ID 2847, Story 4679.