[wordup] Peter Jackson has restored footage from Gallipoli

[Adam Shand]

For those not from NZ/AU Wikipedia has a good article about why the  
Battle of Gallipoli is important down here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_Day

Adam.

From:  
http://www.smh.com.au/news/Film/Into-the-trenches-with-a-cinecamera/ 
2005/04/24/1114281447097.html

Into the trenches, with a cinecamera
April 25, 2005
	 	
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Scenes from a war ... members of 13th Battalion, AIF, occupy Quinn's 
Post.
Photo: Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial

Director Peter Jackson has restored unique footage from Gallipoli, 
writes Paul Byrnes.

It is July 22, 1915, and we are in a trench at Quinn's Post, the most 
dangerous spot on Gallipoli.

Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, a famous (and bankrupt) English war 
correspondent with a taste for fine wine, has lugged a cinecamera up to 
Quinn's, where the trenches are as little as 10 metres from the enemy. 
The Turks throw cricket ball-sized bombs in the hundreds at Quinn's. 
The bombs are routine, but a cinecamera is an event.

Ashmead-Bartlett places the camera in the middle of a partially roofed 
trench, as men in long shorts and braces come and go.

In one shot, a soldier hands a dispatch to an officer and offers a 
faint salute. An inter-title preceding this shot says "Note the 
thinness of the men. Also the 'Anzac uniform' - shorts and sometimes a 
singlet. A runner hands in a message at headquarters."

The next shot is another trench, also partially roofed. In a line, five 
soldiers walk self-consciously towards the camera and then turn right, 
out of frame. The first wears a topi, a British colonial hat, the next 
a flat-topped officer's cap with shade cloth and the third a 
wide-brimmed slouch hat. The fifth is very curious - he has on a topi 
and tie.

The footage - now grainy, scratched and wobbling - is priceless, as 
Charles Bean, the official Australian war historian, knew in 1919 when 
he added the inter-titles. Bean had secured a print for his 
soon-to-be-realised Australian war museum - which is what saved the 
film.

The 20 minutes of footage is the only cine film taken on Gallipoli. It 
includes scenes of British troops at Suvla and Cape Helles, the 
Australians at Anzac Cove, Turkish bombardments and troops embarking at 
Imbros island. Unfortunately, Bean's titles are wrong in several 
places, which has led to continuing debate about what the film actually 
shows.

These debates will soon be easier. Peter Jackson, the director of The 
Lord of the Rings, has digitally restored the film - which is known 
here as Heroes of Gallipoli.

A World War I buff, Jackson approached the Australian War Memorial two 
years ago with the idea of applying computer technology developed at 
Weta Digital, the effects company he co-owns in New Zealand. "He wanted 
to see how the technology could be applied to archival film," says 
Madeleine Chaleyer, the senior curator of film and sound at the 
Australian War Memorial.

The war memorial had destroyed its original nitrate source material in 
1967, after copying it to safety film. The best print available was 
scratched, fuzzy and low in contrast. Weta has removed most of the 
scratches, white spots and some of the shudder caused by shrinkage and 
sprocket damage.

The result is that the film has not looked better since it was first 
screened to rapt audiences at the Empire theatre in London on January 
17, 1916, under the title With the Dardanelles Expedition.

Chaleyer believes there are dangers with digital restoration. "With 
advanced software you can now make a film look better and cleaner than 
the original ever did. Peter has done a great job because it still has 
the feeling of authenticity. The aesthetics have been maintained."

Peter Stanley, principal historian at the war memorial, argues that the 
"topi and tie" footage is more significant now because it documents a 
place that no longer exists. "Gallipoli has changed immensely over the 
years. Quinn's is now gone. It was built on the side of a cliff, with a 
network of trenches and earthworks and saps. The winter rains have 
basically eroded the whole position away so that the side that the 
Anzacs were on is now scattered down Monash Valley as silt."

Part of the attraction for Jackson may have been that the men in the 
footage now thought to show Quinn's Post may have been New Zealanders - 
specifically, the Wellington Battalion commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel 
William Malone.

"The topis and the tie are a clue, because Malone was a stickler for 
standards," says Stanley, whose book on Quinn's Post has just been 
published. "I have not seen anyone else wearing ties in trenches at 
Gallipoli, but Malone insisted on proper dress. He was a real 
martinet."

Malone's diary records Ashmead-Bartlett's visit on July 22 with a 
certain disdain. "He seemed a bit swollen-headed and full of his own 
importance," he wrote. Stanley writes in Quinn's Post that Malone took 
the correspondent to a section subject to Turkish rifle fire - "perhaps 
to teach Bartlett a thing or two".

Ashmead-Bartlett was unpopular at Gallipoli, partly because he lived 
like a king. He installed his own chef and catering manager at the 
press camp at Imbros and spent large amounts on wine - despite being 
?4000 in debt. Nevertheless, he was a seasoned war correspondent and he 
played a significant role in the campaign.

His private criticism of the British commanders at Gallipoli 
contributed to the sacking of the commander-in-chief, Sir Ian Hamilton, 
and may have shortened the campaign. For this, he was sent back to 
London and never allowed to accompany British or empire troops again. 
His lecture tours of Australia and New Zealand in 1916 were dogged by 
official harassment.

It is unlikely he showed the film on those tours. The copy at the war 
memorial came from Sir Alfred Butt, the London impresario who financed 
it. It is only a fraction of the 10,000 feet of film that 
Ashmead-Bartlett took to Gallipoli, but much of it may have been ruined 
by his total lack of camera training. His diaries record that he had 
very little idea what he was doing until early August, when he met a 
camera expert on a British ship. Philip Dutton of the Imperial War 
Museum believes the camera was most likely an Aeroscope, which was boxy 
and heavy by later standards but the latest thing in portability in 
1915. That his shots are often wobbly does not reduce the significance 
of the footage. It was where he used the camera that mattered, not how.

By early September, Ernest Brooks, the Admiralty's official 
photographer, took over most of the filming, earning a small stipend in 
the process (although they still had no official permission to use a 
cinecamera). He shot the film's most dramatic scene - a line of 
soldiers in topis in a vigorous trench fire-fight.

Bean described them as Australians and pointed to Ashmead-Bartlett 
scurrying behind the men. Peter Stanley describes them as Australian 
light-horsemen. Philip Dutton believes they may be Irish Fusiliers.

Choosing his words carefully, in an article in the Historical Journal 
of Film, Radio and Television from 2004, he describes these 18 seconds 
as "possibly the first authentic example of British Commonwealth troops 
in combat during the First World War".

This is debatable, as Ashmead-Bartlett wrote some years later that the 
men began firing after Brooks complained that their re-enacting did not 
look real enough. It may be an authentic shoot-up, but one started for 
the camera.