The Show Place

After 93 years, the Anzacs fight again
(+video)

It was cold and drizzling and the movie was 93 years old - but that didn't stop hundreds turning up to watch the show.

After all, this was no ordinary film. It was the only known movie images of Anzac troops at Gallipoli.

Heroes of Gallipoli - which was restored by Oscar-winning Kiwi director Peter Jackson's company - is being screened continuously on the walls of Auckland Museum from 7.30pm to 10pm before Anzac Day, on Friday.

The 20-minute film is believed to have been shot by British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, the only person known to have filmed the action in and around Anzac Cove from July to September 1915.

It was discovered in a compilation of World War I film sold to the Australian War Memorial in 1938.

The film includes scenes of New Zealand and Australian troops with their British counterparts.

Heroes of Gallipoli also shows a firefight filmed in the trenches, which in parts of the battlefield were only 10m from enemy lines.

Each scene is accompanied by a caption taken from Ashmead-Bartlett's notes about the feats of the Anzacs on the Turkish peninsula.

The film is also screening inside the museum, and dozens of people watched it there last night and signed a digital book of remembrance.

Seventy-four-year-old North Shore resident Jackie Wallace watched from a deck chair on the concrete near the cenotaph.

"I had 11 relatives in World War I, mostly uncles," she said.

Museum director Vanda Vitali said last night's turnout was "outstanding".

"The projection on the wall gives you a sense of what it may have been like back then during battle, the mist, all the dust," she said

Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has a keen interest in World War I, and approached the Australian War Memorial several years ago about restoring the film.

For a full programme of Anzac Day events, visit the museum website http://www.aucklandmuseum.com.