Chukotka baidara: technology and the preservation of traditions. Experience building an Eskimo baidara in the village of Sireniki in 2025

The article describes the experience of shooting an ethnographic documentary film dedicated to the construction of a traditional Eskimo kayak in the village of Sireniki in the Providensky District of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug in 2025 as part of the Man and Boat project (ANO Cyrillica, with the support of the Presidential Grants Fund and the Rossiya – Kultura TV channel). This project has become part of a series of documentaries dedicated to the construction technologies of traditional boats of the indigenous peoples of the North and the Russian Far East.: the Chukchi kayak, the Ulchi Ugda, the Udege dugout and a replica Amur birch bark boat. The construction of a kayak with a length of 5.8 m, a width of 1.8 m and a height of 1.5 m, designed for four people, involved about 30 residents of the village, including older hunters, workers and youth, under the leadership of V.N.Kavaugye, chairman of the TSO KMNS Sireniki. Filming was carried out in two stages (May and August–September 2025), with video recording of the process, animation of key technological stages (P. Klimashkin) and ethnographic interviews; the finished kayak was launched in September 2025 and transferred to the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint-Petersburg.