How to access film archives

BRUCE SCATES: Even in this digital age, newspapers are a very static archive. But through the net here, you can also capture moving images and spoken words that somehow keep the memory of the Great War alive. The Australian War Memorial website here contains footage of early ANZAC days. Films of Australians at war in the Dardanelles, Europe, in the Middle East, and interviews– interviews with the soldiers who returned. This particular film is a kind of collage of Australians at war. It begins with a young man leaving home. It follows him through training and embarkation and it takes us, vicariously, at least, into the field.

We watch the first AIF riding through the sands of the desert, and trudging through the mud of Flanders in the Somme. There’s scenes of fighting, scenes behind the lines. Intimate and sometimes captivating moments with the men and women who served. Some of the shots are staged, of course, but certainly not all of them. There are comparable photographic archives hosted by the Imperial War Museum in London, and several other national deposits as well.