Part of India on Film: 1899 - 1947
This collection of newly digitised films is part of the BFI's contribution to the UK-India Year of Culture 2017, in partnership with the British Council. View more films on BFI Player player.bfi.org.uk/collections/... (UK only)
Extract from "Uti 1925" (1925)
A tiger hunt and the Toda tribe - snapshots of colonial life around Tamil Nadu, plus a visit to the Toda tribe.
There's some odd juxtapositions in this amateur film, shot around the Tamil Nadu hill station of Udagamandalam (Uti according to the title of this film, but more commonly Ooty). Conventional colonial pursuits - a tiger hunt, horseracing, golf - and tourist images of waterfalls and landscapes rub shoulders with quasi-ethnographic shots of the Toda people in the 'mund' - hamlets of distinctive barrel-roofed houses - clustered across their Nilgiri plateau homeland. Without warning, the film then whisks us off to Egypt, with shots of Port Said and Aden.
The film was shot by amateur filmmaker Herbert Uzielli an official in the India Civil Service, based in Madras, from 1931 to 1940.
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