At our annual meeting later this month, ORTWS will be showing a special film screening: “Life with an Indian Prince” by Frank and John Craighead (1940).
In 1939 an Indian Rajput prince read an article by in National Geographic by Frank and John Craighead, and invited them to travel to India as his guest, and witness their ancient practices of falconry, raptor trapping and hunting with cheetahs. With a small grant from the National Geographic Society and a few hundred feet of color film donated by Kodak, John and Frank embarked on an extraordinary trip. This motion picture has never been released publicly, with only a few special screenings since. The film was significant in the development of raptor research methods, as it documented raptor trapping techniques now commonly used by biologists – knowledge of which was previously locked away in ancient texts; either unavailable at the time or not translated to English. National Geographic published an article about the trip in 1942 and subsequently the brothers presented a lecture along with this film footage in Washington D.C. in the same year – becoming one the first glimpses of an ancient way of life in India, now gone forever.
John and Frank Craighead with Prince Bapa