Public will see 1918 footage of George V visiting airbase for first time

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/13/imperial-war-museum-george-v

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Footage of King George V visiting an airbase in April 1918, believed not to have been shown before in public, is part of a major new international digitisation project for the Imperial War Museum, which reopens on 19 July.

The footage, available to see online, shows the king and his entourage depositing their smoking materials before entering the hanger. His Royal Highness then has a look inside a Handley-Page 0/400 aircraft. The striking footage has been given to the European Film Gateway for digitising, alongside film from more than 20 archives all over Europe forming around 700 hours of digitised film from or about the first world war, including newsreels, documentaries, feature films and propaganda films – both pro-war and anti-war.

The British contribution from the archives of the museum also includes rare film from August 1917 that shows a South African labour battalion felling trees "somewhere in France". In the last two years the museum has given more than 200 hours of first world war footage to European Film Gateway EFG1914, in an enterprise coordinated by Deutsches Filminstitut and finished in March this year.

The museum's first world war film archive is one the oldest and largest in the world and highlights of the collection, including The Battle of the Somme, will be available to view in IWM London's new First World War Galleries later this month.

"This two-year project has allowed IWM's film archive to mark the centenary in an exceptional way," said David Walsh, the museum's film expert. "By digitising these films EFG is providing a legacy for sharing and experiencing life at the front. We hope this is a fitting tribute to the film-makers of the time who faced such dangerous and challenging conditions."

The films needed cleaning, reframing and grading and the task of future proofing the IWM archive was carried out by BBC Studios and Post Production Digital Media Services and TK One. It can all be searched and accessed through the European Film Gateway.

The museum, which is based in south London but has five outposts including the Imperial War Museum of the North, Manchester, is also asking budding film-makers to use the newly available material to create their own film about the first world war for this year's IWM short film festival. The deadline for submissions is 31 July.

For more images of the first world war, see the Guardian and Observer's interactive photographic project which updates key scenes before your eyes.