Film Featuring Shots Of Ivan Pavlov, Scenes Of Leningrad Preserved

Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Ivan Pavlov and associates posing for the camera during a brief pause from their game of gorodki.

A film shot in Soviet Russia in 1930 by American medical researcher Francis Bishop was preserved with funding from a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Francis Bishop traveled to Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg), Russia in 1930 to study with Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. The film features shots of Pavlov as well as one of Pavlov’s dogs. There are also scenes of Pavlov playing gorodki, an ancient Russian game that was played by Peter the Great and many other Russian dignitaries. The film additionally features footage of historical landmarks in and near Leningrad, including the Winter Palace, Tsarskoye Selo (“the royal village”), the Neva River, and Nevsky Prospekt, the famous Russian street named after Alexander Nevsky.

The Francis Bishop grant is the fourth grant that the Hoover Institution has received from the National Film Preservation Foundation.