Belarusian Trace in the Development of Documentary Film in Eastern Siberia

The article addresses the situation with documentary films in Eastern Siberia from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s, when, in order to expand the geography and subject matter of newsreel footage, an extensive network of news bureaus was set in remote regions of the Soviet Union and schools of regional documentary filmmaking started to emerge. The mechanisms of the spread of ideas and screen documentary principles in multinational creative teams of East Siberian newsfilm bureaus are considered. The article analyses the newsreel material shot during the Great Patriotic War by documentary filmmakers of the Transbaikal Military District film group, notably, the Belarusian frontline cameraman Y.F. Dovner and his colleagues V.A. Gromadzinskii and V.A. Kashtelyan. Information about a number of issues of the “Eastern Siberia” newsreel dated the first half of the 1950s is presented.