BFI

Another example of the longer, supplementary series of newsfilms produced by Topical in the early months of the war, and one of the last that they were able to release before all permits to film were withdrawn.

This lively item is notable for the degree of fakery involved. The newsreel companies were adamant that all of their war films were authentic, but here the cameraman seems to have co-opted a group of British and Belgian troops, and in one scene French, to re-enact scenes of fighting for him.

Some of it looks convincing enough - certainly enough to fool an audience in 1915, and there is genuine footage mixed in with the material that is obviously dramatised (it is necessary only to consider what danger the cameraman was in to determine where such footage is likely to be inauthentic).

Luke McKernan

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