'A Remembrance' is a short experimental documentary video essay that aims to recognise the subjective position of researcher or documentary maker and set personal memories and reflections in the context of larger historic and geopolitical narratives. This film reflects on my Great Grandfather’s involvement in the battle that took place in July 1917 in the dunes northwest of Nieuwpoort, Belgium. The point at which the Western Front met the sea. Through remembering and considering 2 photographic portraits, one lost and recalled from the perspective of my childhood, the other available to be viewed as an adult, the film uses reflections, scholarly texts, as well as testimony, film and posters held in the IWM archive, to consider how we are prone to the rhetoric and discourse of our time and why men, of my Great Grandfather's generation, felt compelled to fight. It reflects on the contingent nature of understanding and the contrast between my own fortunate experience and the experiences of those, like my Great Grandfather and others around the world today, whose lives so catastrophically collide with events beyond their control.
