Documentary Pick: The First World War From Above (2010)
Last month, people around the world marked the centenary of the start of World War I, a four year long battle across Europe that changed the face of warfare for ever. Primary among those changes were two inventions that came to prominence in the years just before the start of the war: film and airplanes. On film, the horrors of modern warfare were captured and returned home giving those far away from the frontlines a sense of the insanity. Contributing to that insanity were the first generation of fighter planes, flight itself barely invented a decade earlier.
Both inventions came together in what was, at the time, a unique and interesting way when a pair of French veterans got into an air ship and filmed the frontlines of the war, from Belgium to Switzerland, in 1919. That footage was rediscovered in the BBC documentary The First World War from Above.
Fergal Keane revisits some of the places captured by the French airmen, as well as examines with historians the visible signs of the First World War that remain across what was once the Western Front. Craters from landmines that once killed dozens of enemy soldiers are now picturesque ponds for farms, and water hazards for golf courses.
More than a history lesson and a travelogue, the doc builds up to Keane’s meeting with the daughter of the airship pilot, whose name was Jacques Yung-de-Prevaux. Not only was Yung-de-Prevaux a World Ward I vet and one of the men responsible for what a century later is an important historical resource, but he was also involved in the French resistance in World War II. Executed by the Germans before France’s liberation for helping the Allied war effort, the occasional image of her father piloting an aircraft over devastated post-war Europe was a wonderful gift for Aude Yung-de Prevaux, who was still a child when she lost her parents to the Nazis. It’s a poignant reminder that as we remember the history, we remember the people that lived it, and in some cases, survived it.