See the iconic 1916 film The Battle of the Somme by Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, with Laura Rossi's acclaimed music performed live.
To mark the centenary of the end of the Battle of the Somme, Imperial War Museums (IWM) and Somme100 FILM present this extraordinary and moving UNESCO-listed historical film, accompanied live by the Â鶹ԼÅÄ Concert Orchestra.
Smiling awkwardly at the new-fangled cameras, troops move towards the Front in the Great War. Their actions are far removed from the swagger and march of war films, but then this is real.
The Battle of the Somme remains one of the most successful British films ever made: almost half the population of the UK at the time watched the film, hoping to catch a glimpse of a friend or a loved one.
'And these troops in the mud grinned or stared at us to a new music score by Laura Rossi, brilliantly effective... Whatever piercing image you might pick – the troops' cheerful waves, the mascot dog dead with its master, the trench channel's mud and corpses – Rossi's score will help them to reverberate even further into the future' (Geoff Brown, The Times)
The screening is preceded by a talk by IWM's Senior Curator Dr Toby Haggith and composer Laura Rossi.
NB this film has a Parental Guidance (PG) rating.
