Most folks, when they think about World War I, tend to recall images of black and white battlefields. It’s natural, as old b&w photos and movies are all any of us have seen of WW1.
Until now.
Der Spiegel has published an online article and photo gallery of heretofore unseen color images from the Great War. Fascinating stuff.
Here’s a link to the WW1 article, and another for the WW1 photo gallery.
As fascinating as the WW1 photos are, they are still scenes of sadness and of devastated lives.
In the decade prior to the war, back in 1907, an Italian film-maker had happier thoughts in mind when he created a short film titled Butterflys. The original masters of the film were thought to be long gone, but recently a fairly pristine copy was found.
Set to a new piece of music composed in 2008, Butterflys is an interesting piece for the first 4 minutes or so.
However, the final two minutes are quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. The muted but still rich colors of this hand-tinted film seem to come to life in the beautiful finale. Click on the image below to view the video.
