World War I Films in Color

In 2014, the same team that collaborated on the renowned World War II series Apocalypse produced a similar documentary series on the Great War. As with the previous production, the new series has some remarkable colored footage including scenes from Wilbur H. Durborough's film On the Firing Line with the Germans (1915).

Durborough and General von Schlieffen in East Prussia, June 1915

Online Release On the Firing Line with the Germans (USA, 1915)

As described in a previous weblog, Durborough's film has been restored by the Library of Congress and the movie was uploaded on the internet in November 2016. After almost one hundred years an original World War I film is back on the screen. To coincide with this online release the authors prepared an extended story on the making of Durborough's remarkable war film. Based on our previous book American Cinematographers in the Great War, we added new information that was found in early 2016 in the German archives as well as in the American and Dutch newspapers.

We recently prepared a new, extended story on Durborough's photographic work during World War I. You can read this Durborough Film Annotation (2nd edition) here.

If you are interested to see Durborough in color here is a scene from Apocalypse World War I, episode 2, showing his film work at the Eastern Front in 1915.