Press Kit

PREMIERES THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009, 8.30PM ON ABC1
PREMIERES
THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009, 8.30PM ON ABC1
Ninety years after the last shots were fired, two young
Australian historians embark on an emotional journey to the
First World War battlefields on the infamous Western Front.
www.screenaustralia.gov.au/showcases/lostinflanders
PREMIERES THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009, 8.30PM ON ABC1
Synopses
Ninety years after the last shots were fired, two young Australian
historians embark on an emotional journey to the battlefields of the
First World War on the infamous Western Front.
History teacher Michael Molkentin joins battlefield historian Mat
McLachlan in an exploration of the Australian soldiers’ wartime
experience in Belgium. The two young men visit iconic sites, and join
an archaeological excavation of the trenches and fields where 20,000
Australians went missing, their bodies lost, their graves unmarked.
Photograph by C. Moore Hardy © Screen Australia.
While Michael and Mat fail to uncover any soldiers’ remains, a
twist of fate sees local workers uncover the bodies of five Australian
soldiers, while laying a gas pipe nearby. The discovery sparks a unique
investigation, bringing science and military history together, involving
Michael and Mat in a gripping forensic detective story that leads them
back to rural Australia.
Through DNA testing, used for the first time on First World War remains, two of the soldiers are ultimately
identified and finally laid to rest in graves marked with their names. As Michael and Mat trace the
stories of the missing soldiers, and meet their descendants, they learn more about the cost of Australia’s
involvement in the war. Speaking with the soldiers’ families, visiting the towns where they grew up, walking
the ground where they died and finally standing by their gravesides as the men are laid to rest, Michael and
Mat rediscover a vital episode in Australian history which illuminates the real sacrifice of the thousands of
Australians who lost their lives in Flanders.
Key Credits
Producer / Co-Director - STUART SCOWCROFT
Writer / Director - GEOFF BURTON
Associate Producer - MAT MCLACHLAN
Director of Photography - JOEL PETERSON
Editor - JACKIE POWELL
Composer - GUY GROSS
Historical Advisors / Researchers - MAT MCLACHLAN,
MICHAEL MOLKENTIN
Executive Producer for Screen Australia - PENNY ROBINS
Commissioning Editor for ABC - Alan Erson
Narrated by RACHAEL BLAKE
Duration - 55 minutes
Lost in Flanders is a Screen Australia National Interest Program in association with Intomedia and McLachlan Media.
Developed with the assistance of the New South Wales Film and Television Office and the Australian Film Commission.
Developed and produced in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. © Screen Australia 2008.
For interviews and further information contact:
Stephanie Whitelock, 02 8333 3874 / 0421 598 678, [email protected]
For images please visit http://abc.net.au/tvpublicity
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PREMIERES THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009, 8.30PM ON ABC1
Production Story
Writer/director Geoff Burton’s involvement in Lost In Flanders
really began when he noticed a startling modern phenomenon.
In an era seemingly obsessed with money and personal success,
Burton was amazed by the curiosity of young Australians about
“the men of their grandfathers’ generation, who suffered in such
hell holes as the Western Front”. He realised that “the heart
and soul” of a film about Australian soldiers wasn’t buried in
standard First World War newsreels and archival footage, but in
“the personal experiences of the young innocent soldiers who
volunteered to fight, and often die, in a conflagration of which
they had almost no understanding.”
Photograph by C. Moore Hardy © Screen Australia.
Capturing the immediacy of lives lost over ninety years ago wasn’t
going to be easy – a fact of which producer Stuart Scowcroft
was well aware. His interest was sparked when family friend
and battles expert, Mat McLachlan, was invited to join a British
archeological dig in Flanders. The possibility of discovering
individual soldier’s remains, “struck me as critical to humanising
the historical record,” Scowcroft recalls.
Burton agreed the documentary had to include “a personal
guide for the audience,” structured around a present day story
of “two young Australian men, of around the soldiers’ age, who
embark on a trip to explore the major battle sites of the Western
Front where Australians fought.” McLachlan had been visiting
the area for six years, and knew the terrain intimately, but for
history teacher Michael Molkentin, the journey would represent
a mind-blowing first encounter with material he’d previously only
experienced in books.
Photograph by Mat McLachlan. © Screen Australia.
At first, a high level of suspense affected the filming. “I always go
into the field with an outline, knowing it will change,” Scowcroft
reveals. “But we were quite despondent up to the middle of
the shoot, as our historians had found nothing we could use.”
With the timely discovery of five bodies, which came to the
filmmakers’ attention through a series of coincidences, the whole
project changed emphasis. “Then it became more like a forensic
detective story,” Scowcroft remarks. “The Army History Unit was
more surprised than anyone when they discovered a DNA match
with living Australians.”
For Burton, the “lost” soldiers were the key to the whole story. Juxtaposing the superb black and white
photographs of legendary Australian photographer Frank Hurley, plus the diaries he wrote in the field, with
“archival footage that we believe has not been seen by modern audiences before,” Burton built the film to
a climactic, dramatically moving sequence, with a classical music soundtrack: “we filmed our two modern
travellers retracing the steps of the recently identified soldiers, as they proceeded to their deaths in the
Polygon Wood.”
“You’d have to have a heart of stone,” Scowcroft suggests, “to remain unmoved by the story we found.
The experience changed my whole attitude to World War One.”
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PREMIERES THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009, 8.30PM ON ABC1
Historical Background
Today it’s hard for most of us to imagine the full horror of Europe’s
first industrialised war. The tidy logarithms of modern conflict with
its remote controls and video games don’t help. But even at the
time, the new rules of engagement shocked military strategists,
troops and civilians. For centuries war had been conducted like
cumbersome chess with swords, cavalry and cannons. But there
was nothing elegant about aerial bombardment, mustard gas and
machine guns. The First World War was fought inch by inch across
the blasted wastelands of Belgium and France, with the enemy often
just a shout away.
Image courtesy of the Hunter Family.
The result was staggering loss of life, as commanders scrambled
to adapt their traditional military training to the new conditions.
After Germany’s invasion of Belgium in August 1914, Britain
had declared war, rushing 100,000 troops into France to halt
the German’s southward march. Over 300,000 Australians, all
volunteers, eventually joined the conflict. But a messy impasse
ensued, with both sides forced to dig in along what became known
as the Western Front – 700 kilometres of entrenched battalions
stretching from the North Sea to Switzerland. More than a million
men were killed or wounded on both sides in 1916 during the
four-month Battle of the Somme alone.
The First battle of Bullecourt occurred in May 1917, and has been
immortalized in a diorama at the Australian War Memorial in
Canberra. Combined British and Anzac losses exceeded 40,000
men, but the Aussies had broken through enemy lines. With the
onset of winter it rained heavily for weeks, turning the trenches into
mudslides, increasing the misery of the soldiers, and drastically
impeding artillery fire and troop movement.
From July to December the Australians engaged in the Battle for
Passchendaele with particularly savage fighting in Polygon Wood,
which the Australian divisions took from the Germans at a cost of
5000 lives.
Although they made many key tactical advances, besting the
Germans point for point, the Australians were repeatedly stranded
without reinforcements, which cemented their reputation as one of
the toughest troops on the front. But such mistakes by the British High
Command also led to bitter resentment. Some brigades were almost
Image courtesy of Sue Moore and the Dunolly Museum. completely decimated; the ranks of others were more than halved.
With the victory of the Revolutionary Bolsheviks in Russia in November 1917, who brokered an armistice with
Germany, they were able to move more troops to the Western front, compounding the Allies’ misery.
The capture of 130 square kilometres of ground had cost the Allied forces almost 500,000 men, with the
Germans losing half that number. The war ground on for another year until hostilities ended on the Western
Front on 11 November 1918.
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PREMIERES THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009, 8.30PM ON ABC1
Interview with battlefield historian Mat McLachlan
Photograph by C. Moore Hardy © Screen Australia.
I was thrilled when I was asked to join a British archeological
dig on the site of the Battle of Messines in Flanders, to provide
Australian input. In August 2007 we joined the dig with a
documentary film crew lead by producer Stuart Scowcroft and
director Geoff Burton. We knew the possibility of uncovering a
missing Australian soldier’s body was very real but after three days
we hadn’t uncovered anything we could use.
By coincidence I then ran into a local friend of mine, a café owner
named Johan Vandewalle, who mentioned that he had recently
helped exhume the bodies of five Australian soldiers discovered
on the battlefield (48,000 Australians were killed on the Western
Front and 20,000 of them have no known grave). Johan’s story
about recovering the bodies was amazing.
Back in Australia, the Army History Unit and the Belgian
authorities began using DNA to try and identify the remains
and trace the descendants of the men. It was Geoff, coming to
the project with a big passion for the landscape, who became
the driving force behind the narrative. He suggested we use
the perspective of Michael Molkentin, a young historian who
was a researcher on the archaeological dig, and a visitor to the
battlefields for the first time. It could have been very clinical and
dry, but the material has a massively emotional effect on people.
You wouldn’t believe the numbers of Australian travellers who
now follow the steps of the Anzacs. It’s a booming tourist industry.
You see tough men cry like a baby when they stand in front of
the Menin Gate memorial in Ypres and read the names of 54,000
Allied soldiers missing from the conflict in Belgium, including
more than 6000 Australians.
About Mat McLachlan
Mat McLachlan ’s family business is media publishing and travel. He is one of Australia’s leading war
historians, and a presenter on the History Channel. He has been leading tours of key Anzac battle sites for
over a decade. He is also a magazine editor and publisher (including the travel and lifestyle publication Travel
& Living). In 2006, he wrote Walking With The Anzacs, the definitive guide to Australian battlefields on the
Western Front. His next book, Walking with the Anzacs: Gallipoli, a guide to the Australian battlefields of
Gallipoli, will be released in 2010.
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PREMIERES THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009, 8.30PM ON ABC1
Interview with history teacher Michael Molkentin
My personal feeling is that digging up bones is a means to an
end, but I wouldn’t normally endorse it. Even in unmarked resting
places, Australian soldiers have always been very respectfully
commemorated. There are more war memorials in Australia than
anywhere else in the world. But what we discovered during the
filming of Lost In Flanders was extraordinary and remarkable. I hope
it will focus media attention on the crushing grief which the First
World War created and which still surrounds the missing soldiers.
Photograph by C. Moore Hardy © Screen Australia.
When I was five years old my father took me to the War Memorial
in Canberra and it had a big impact on me. I was confronted
by something I didn’t understand, and I was fascinated by the
battlefield dioramas because of the bleak landscape they depicted.
When I was approached by Geoff and Stuart to become involved
in the documentary I had won a scholarship to research how
archaeology could be used to teach history. I wanted to get
teenagers excited in the classroom. It was my first time to Europe,
actually seeing the places I had learnt about in books and on maps.
The whole experience changed the way I approach history.
It reiterated the idea that war is not about guns, it’s about families
and relationships. When Jim Hunter told us the story of his great
great uncle who buried his brother on the battlefield – the same
soldier Johann uncovered 90 years later - it recalibrated my whole
understanding of the First World War. And documentary filmmaking.
About Michael Molkentin
Michael Molkentin is a high school English and History teacher whose passion for the Australian wartime
experience has resulted in numerous academic articles and research papers, with an emphasis on landscape,
archaeology and the history of human conflict. He is currently finishing his first book, a history of the
Australian Flying Corps in the First World War.
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PREMIERES THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009, 8.30PM ON ABC1
About the Filmmakers
Geoff Burton — Writer, Director
Geoff Burton was inducted into the Australian Cinematographers’
Society Hall of Fame in 2005, and has won numerous awards for his
work as both a director and cinematographer. His director credits
include the acclaimed feature film The Sum of Us (co-director),
Sydney: The Story of a City for IMAX; the telemovie Aftershocks;
Intensive Care for SBS TV; A Fine Body of Gentlemen and Bastards
from the Bush for ABC TV. Geoff wrote and directed the ABC TV series’
Australians at War, The Actor and the President and The Sri Lanka Series
for SBS TV, and Flight Over the Equator for the Discovery Channel.
Photograph by Melissa Molkentin. © Screen Australia.
Geoff’s cinematographer credits include seminal Australian cinema
such as Sunday Too Far Away, Storm Boy, The Year My Voice Broke,
Flirting, Dead Calm, Frauds, Sirens and Lucky Miles. His television
credits include Vietnam, Bangkok Hilton, Hell Has Harbour Views and
After the Deluge. In 2008 Geoff has directed two documentaries for
Screen Australia; Infamous Victory: Ben Chifley’s Battle for Coal and
Lost in Flanders.
Stuart Scowcroft — Producer, Co-director
Stuart Scowcroft has an exciting track record in all stages of production on major national and
international projects. In Australia he has held executive positions with the Nine Network, Ten Network,
ABC, and Becker Entertainment, in News, Current Affairs, Infotainment, Documentary, Major Event Outside
Broadcast (including Australian Bicentennial and Gallipoli Anniversary), Science, Gameshows; drama series,
mini-series, and Children’s productions. His International co-production partners include NHK, TV Asahi,
SDR, BBC, TVNZ. He is currently developing four feature screenplays as producer working with a range of
directors and writers as well as developing the documentary series The Bone Diggers and Hungry Planet;
The Social History of Food.
Penny Robins — Executive Producer for Screen Australia
Penny Robins has been an executive producer with Film Australia since mid-2003. Formerly an independent
producer she has extensive experience in documentary and factual programme making.
Her credits as executive producer include: the two-part series Bombora – The Story of Australian Surfing;
the six-part Australian series Who Do You Think You Are? for SBS; the Logie-nominated cross-platform
longitudinal Life Series (the second installment Life at 3 has just completed post-production); Nerves of Steel
(winner Mention D’Honneur Olympic Spirit category at the Sport Movies & TV 22nd International Festival
2006); Troubled Minds – the Lithium Revolution (winner Main Prize Vega Science Awards for Excellence in
Scientific Broadcasting); the Logie-nominated series Divorce Stories (winner of the Sydney Morning Herald
Couch Potato Awards); the four-part series Policing The Pacific and Mr Patterns (winner Hawaii International
film festival Golden Maile Award, Best Documentary Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards).
Her current slate also includes Life at 5, Feral Peril, National Treasures – Australian Heritage, Every Family’s
Nightmare and Honey Bee Blues.
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PREMIERES THURSDAY 23 APRIL 2009, 8.30PM ON ABC1
Book and website resources
Bean, Charles, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18,
vol IV, Angus & Robertson, 1940.
Carlyon, Les, The Great War, Macmillan, 2006.
Cave, Nigel, Polygon Wood, Leo Cooper, 1999.
Davies, Will (editor), Somme Mud: The War Experiences of an
Infantryman in France, 1916-1919, Random House, 2006.
--In the Footsteps of Private Lynch, Random House, 2008.
McLachlan, Mat, Walking With the Anzacs: A Guide to Australian
Battlefields on the Western Front, Hachette, 2007.
Oldham, Peter, Messines Ridge, Pen & Sword Books, 2003.
Photograph by Michael Molkentin. © Screen Australia.
Australian War Memorial: Information about Australian soldiers,
Australian military history and photographs of the Western Front.
www.awm.gov.au
Australians on the Western Front 1914-1918: Australian government website outlining Australia’s involvement
in the Western Front fighting. www.ww1westernfront.gov.au
National Archives of Australia: Service records of Australian WWI soldiers. www.naa.gov.au
Great War Forum: Good source for opinions about WWI from historians and war enthusiasts.
Specific questions can be asked, and will be replied to. http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/
Polygon Wood: Website of Johan Vandewalle, the amateur archaeologist who exhumed the five
Australian bodies. www.polygonwood.com
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