The first trailer has been released for Peter’s Jackson’s WWI documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old, giving us a glimpse of the amazing digital restoration work he’s bringing to hundred-year-old archive footage.
The film is getting its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on Tuesday 16 October, and the event will be simultaneously screened in 2D and 3D at selected cinemas across the UK, followed by a post screening Q&A with Jackson where he’ll answer fan questions sent in via Twitter.
Partly commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to mark the First World War centenary, the film is made up of original footage that’s been colourised, polished, smoothed and converted to 3D, bringing the past to new life in a pretty amazing way. The detail we can already see in the trailer looks stunning, and the film looks set to offer a pretty definitive archive of war footage.
“I wanted to reach through the fog of time and pull these men into the modern world, so they can regain their humanity once more – rather than be seen only as Charlie Chaplin-type figures in the vintage archive film,” says Jackson, who’s been working on the project alongside his writing and producing duties for Mortal Engines. “By using our computing power to erase the technical limitations of 100-year cinema, we can see and hear the Great War as they experienced it.”
They Shall Not Grow Old is screening at selected cinemas on the 16th of October. Buy tickets, and find out where it’s playing here.