Today on the ELAR blog, we are sharing the next short film from the video installation created by Anna and Remy Sowa of Chouette Films. The film featured in this post was created from footage from the ELAR deposit primary data of Vasyugan and Aleksandrovo dialects of Eastern Khanty deposited by ELDP grantee Andrey Filchenko.

Vasyugan river dialect becomes an extinct language. Living now in large multi-ethnic villages, the very few remaining speakers are separated by hundreds of kilometers of forest and marsh, devoid of the chance to converse. Old and less mobile, a rare opportunity for them to communicate in their mother tongue is by recording video messages when language documentation projects like ELDP work in the area. The unique language of Siberian forest fisher-hunter-gatherers, Vasyugan dialect of Eastern Khanty, a Uralic language in Western Siberia, in Russia, still has 3 remaining speakers.– Andrey Filchenko

Thank you to Anna, Remy, Andrey, and the speakers who made this film possible! Check back here on the blog next week to see the LAST short film from this series!

Blog post by Martha Tsutsui Billins