A hundred years

Australian artist Angelica Mesiti was commissioned by the Australian War Memorial to explore new ways of interpreting the Australian experience of the Western Front and its legacy. The film she created is a meditation on the scars and trauma that are left behind on the landscape, particularly the Somme battlefields.

Film synopsis:

‘Winter, spring, summer, autumn. Seasons change regardless of whether we are in peace or at war. The cycles of the natural world are resilient, persistent and unwavering. One hundred years after the devastating events of the Great War, the land of the most brutal battlefields in northern France have come back to life. Still marked by the scars of war—a deep crater from a detonated mine, winding dugouts of former trenches, and a lone tree that survived the bombing of a forest—these landmarks become memorials to the horrors of a war that devastated a generation. A musician walks over the grass that has filled in the crater. His slow air tune, played on a tin whistle, is a requiem for the thousands of lives lost, hastily buried in the soil beneath his feet a century ago. Here the bodies of fallen soldiers have returned to the land and nourish the soil. Nature continues to regenerate.’ (Kathleen Ritter)


Credits:

Director: Angelica Mesiti
Writer: Angelica Mesiti
Producer: Anne Becker/ PLATÔ¿
Performer: Julien Desailly
Director of Photography: Pierre Jouvion
Editor: Angelica Mesiti
Original music: Julien Desailly
Music recordist and arranger: Jan Vysocky
Steadycam: Olivier Merckx¿
Camera assistant: Marie Célette¿
Sound recordists: Marie-Clotilde Chéry, Marc Parazon, Jan Vysocky
Sound editor and re-recording mixer: Jan Vysocky
Assistant editors: Clara Saunier, Adrien Lhoste¿
Visual effects: Adrien Lhoste¿
Colorist: Muriel Archambaud¿
Title design: JulieGilles
Camera: RVZ
Steadycam Trinity: Steady Productions
Drone: Kuest Prod¿
Mixing studio: Studio Cairos

This film was shot on location on the former First World War battlefields of the Somme, Picardy France.