BEHIND 'HET GROTE OFFENSIEF' 3/3 🪖🎥

Hey ho, let's go with another nieuwsbrief.

And take close attention, because there are two exclusive things in here which I have never published before.

Just like the final battle of the offensive to clear out the Westerschelde in 1944, the final episode of the 3-part series of Het Grote Offensief is in my opinion the most thrilling one. With everybody focussing on Walcheren - the island at the westpoint of Zeeland and the last German stronghold along the Westerschelde - all involved prepared for a brutal showdown.

I think of all three opisodes with this one we specifically succeeded marvelously in recreating the tension that must have been present at the time in the numerous bunkers, headquarters, landing craft, ships, and minds of the commanders and soldiers involved and take you into a nail-biting reconstruction of what actually went down.

So, tune in this Sunday September 21 at 21.10hrs. Or stream it now via NPOStart.

For this ultimate reconstruction the form we chose for this series culminates in a great crescendo. And after part 1 and 2 of this newsletter focused on the creation of the scale model and the studio sets, the last will tell you more about the third and fourth visual layer of our story: the archive footage used and strategic maps we created.

I had worked with archive footage before, but not on this scale. I have once worked on a rough sketch of a portrait on Dutch legend Drs. P (did the last filmed interview with him behore he passed away in 2015). While editing it with Tessel de Vries, I started experimenting with weaving together different layers of archive footage and newly shot stuff and I had a lot of ideas how to elaborate on that, but that never happened within this project. It never even saw the light of day. If you're interested in this attempt at doing something, check it out below. Beware, this is unpublished and raw, ungraded, unmixed work. Half an hour of unique footage featuring a.o. Drs. P (❤️), Lucky Fonz III, Faberyayo and Yousef Gnaoui. I've put it on 'unlisted' on Vimeo, so let's keep it between us:

I also once made this short thingy for Eye when they asked me to dig into some of their silent era archive reels and create something new with what I found. By doing that project I realized that within film archives stories are hidden and you can use these to tell your own ones.

So it is with that perspective that I started working on Het Grote Offensief. I had a hunch of what could be done when treating archive footage as if it was new footage. I sometimes say: images are words, in the sense that you can stitch together shots to form visual sentences. Shots are key stones of visual stories as words are key stones of their written counter parts. So I decided to treat the archive footage just the same as I treat my own footage: with a slightly schizofrenic balance between the utmost respect and total disrespect.

But first let me take a small step back, since behind the production of the archive footage during World War II there are some interesting things as well.

First of all, who made that footage? Whose stories are they? It's good to realize that from a film perspective independent journalism of World War II doesn't really exist.

I remember that during the second war in Irak media started talking about embedded journalism, meaning journalists attached to military units and reporting straight from the frontline. Although that sounded like a new thing at the time, that was actually not really the case.

With film equipment getting smaller and more portable in the late 30's of the 20th century, journalists where already an integrated (embedded) part of the armies fighting between 1940 and 1945. They weren't emploid by independent news outlets, that's true, since they were actually part of the army or otherwise overseen by the government, but that was the whole discussion about being embedded in 2003 as well. How independent will your reporting be about soldiers in a war when as a journlist you rely on these same soldiers to keep you alive?

It's often said that history is written by the one who wins the war. When it comes to filmed archives there's a case to made against it. Because you can't really argue against something that is caught on film (which is why for instance I think the famous Srbrenica rolls of film where "accidentilly" destroyed and why it was couragious what De Volkskrant did last year to retrieve the footage of the Hawija bombing by Dutch F16's). Well, of course you can argue that film also doesn't tell everything and doesn't capture the whole of reality, but then you talk about perspective and why you see or do not see certain things in filmed frames.

A somewhat philosophical question, which brings me to the men that actually shot news reels in WWII.

From the German part, a weekly news program was distributed widely in cinemas in Germany and the occupied countries under the name of Die Deutsche Wochenschau. These news reels were a herald of the daily news shows we have on TV nowadays, and were produced by UFA. Not a part of the German army, but actually owned by the Nazi party (and nowadays by Fremantle, but let's not go in it too deep).

I obtained 92 episodes of the Wochenchau stretching from 1940 until 1944 in pretty high definition, and started reviewing them. It was important to realize that what we see now is pure Nazi propaganda. Everything we see fitted the Nazi world view. Nevertheless it's easy to loose yourself in them, because they're fascinating and a window to the 1940's.

The news items talk about a number of things, from factories being opened, children's summer camps but also easily switch to brutal and vivid images of acts and victims of war. As an example of how crazy these reels are, here are some stills of an item shot when the Japanese minister of foreign affairs visited Berlin in 1941 and the whole city was filled with people to welcome him.

Here's a link to an article in The New York Times of 1941, covering the visit. I find it hard not to mirror this article to stuff happening nowadays, watching how Trump is welcomed by the British royals, Netanyahu being welcomed by Trump in the White House or Zelensky being offended in the same Oval Office.

Pretty clever designer tho, that noticed that the circle in which the swastika was placed echoes the red rising sun in the Japanese flag. And look at that framing. Those Nazis knew how to frame things (they still do by the way, but in a slightly different way, just ask Jimmy Kimmel).

Another image which really caught my eye was that of a German anti-aircraft gunner in Italy in 1944. Shot during what looks like a hot day, the gunner took of his shirt to operate the anti-aircraft gun in the burning sun. Of course one can't do without a pair of fashionable sun glasses when firing into the sky.

When you're a propagandist, these are the images you are looking for. And I have to admit, I was too. I didn't use this image, because it didn't fit our story but I did look for close ups like this, because they bring you up close and personal to the soldiers (had to make one RIP Robert Redford reference in this newsletter).

I did find some great shots in sequences actually shot in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen en West-Brabant during our conflict in the Wochenschau reels. And it's weird to realize that these were the real men we're talking about. And to be honest, I don't think these soldiers look heroic at all. When I look into their eyes and body posture, they look scared, anxious, frightened of what may come.

When the war gets tougher and tougher for the Nazi's, it's weird to notice the Wochenschau-makers go out of their way to try and cover that. Fascinating. Made me think of Muhammed "There are no American tanks in Baghdad" Saheed al-Sahhaf and Sean "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration ever - period" Spicer.

Propaganda will be propaganda.

What also striked me from the German news reels was how close the camera came to battle. The reels show actual fighting, explosions from close by. Other countries were more hesitant in getting close, from what I could judge. Closest maybe came the Polish army. More on that later.

The Canadians and British made the film units really part of their army. So the camera operators and photographers were soldiers with cameras. Literally. This is what they looked like:

They had great badges too:

I owe these guys a lot since it's because men like them that we're able to tell our story.

From a filmmakers perspective it's interesting to notice the differences from country to country between camera styles and topics being covered.

For instance, the Canadian equivalent of Die Deutsche Wochenschau were the Canadian Army Newsreels, which were produced for the homefont in Canada. The Canadians were under strict censorship of what could be shown. It's remarkable how far from the front these reels feel. Almost no fighting is in them, no wounded or dead soldiers (not even from the Germans). They depict the war as quite a friendly occupation. And to be honest, their camerawork is pretty dull and safe and less brave when compared to some of the Amercian, British, German or Polish reels. That is probably for a large part due to the fact that the Canadian army needed soldiers badly, for a war pretty far away. We still used quite a lot of footage frome these reels though.

Interested? Here's a great playlist on YouTube with a lot of Canadian Army Newsreels.

Another interesting thing to talk is the way the Polish army shot news reels. Since the invasion and defeat of Poland by the Nazi's in 1939, large parts of the Polish army fled and turned into an army in exile. Their story is a story in itself, which our narrative only touches upon lightly. The Polish general Maczek and his Polish First Armored Division proved to be one of the bravest and best to fight against the Germans. But being in exile and having no real audience for their coverage, the Polish camera crews where much more free to shoot whatever they found fit for film. And thus their films are much more free as well.

One of the films we took footage from is called "Idziemy!", meaning as much as "Forward". This film (which is nowhere to be found online, so I can't link to it) covers a pretty long period in the history of the Polist First Armored Division, from its training in England until it was righteously covered with medals at the end of the war. But in this film there was one image that hit me, taken during their operation to liberate Northwest France or West-Belgium. We see a two men of a tank crew, taking a pause from battle. Not because it is time for a break, but because they have to. Because they're exhausted. They're on the ground, one of them almost collapses, so another one has to support them. Their faces are covered in dust, they mumble, aimlessly, their eyes are filled with the horror of battle.

This is what fighting till the end looks like.

Notice the clean ear of the man on the right, popping out of his dusty face, because it was probably covered with a headphone used to communicate with the rest of his crew.

I could talk for hours more, type hundreds more words but I think for now it's enough.

"But help!", you think, "you haven't even begun to talk about the last visual layer: the maps."

You know what, I think I'll save that for one more newsletter.

So this is not the end, Jim Morrison. One more next week.

Let me send you into the weekend with another newsletter exclusive. One of the first things I did when starting pre-production was taking a research trip to Zeeland with friend and researcher Edward Liddiard. During two days we visited Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and Walcheren. I wanted to get grip on the landscape, visit the locations where our story took place, see the light and feel history below my feet. And because we were already looking at archive footage, I also wanted to see what Zeeland looks like on film nowadays. What's left of the past.

So I took the old Bolex of my friend Milan van Dril (because I wanted to film it as much the same as the second world war correspondents as possible) and two small rolls of 16mm film and just filmed away, mostly shots of Edward in his defining Montgomery duffle coat. Never filmed analogue before myself, so it's a bit sketchy but when I put some score by Sharkee (who masterfully composed all music for Het Grote Offensief) under it, it still turned into something.

It helped me get into the vibe to shoot this whole enterprise.

See you again next week, for what will be really the last newsletter about Het Grote Offensief.

Again, enjoy the weekend, chill a little, do something nice.

❤️