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Thame Remembers the Great War

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Sonja Francis

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A poignant film to commemorate the 400 men from Thame who fought in the First World War, and those who died, has been made by Thame Museum in conjunction with Thame Town Council.

Shot during filming at Chinnor & PR station (Courtesy of Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway)
Shot during filming at Chinnor & PR station (Courtesy of Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway)

The film was directed by Ian Stark, and the crew and cast include town councillors, and the ex Mayor of Thame, Peter Lambert was behind the camera for some of the scenes.

Many of the world war artifacts in the film were provided by Ian Jones, a local collector of military items, who also plays the part of a French farmer in the film.

The film is all part of a year of commemorations under the title of Thame Remembers, which includes an exhibition at the museum which runs until August 20. The film and the website:  www.thameremembers.org will be going live next Tuesday, July 8, 2014.

THE PROJECT

The aims of the project, Thame Remembers, is to research all the names on Thame War Memorials to discover more about their lives, to indentify the location of their grave or memorial and place a “Thame Remembers!” cross on each resting place, wherever in the world that may be.

The project wants to bring home to the people of the town how many people have lost their lives and how
important it is that we never forget what they have done for our country.

 

MORE about ‘Thame Remembers

 

Comments

2 responses to “Thame Remembers the Great War”

  1. Ian Stark avatar
    Ian Stark

    I’d like to respond to Mr Knight’s comments in my capacity as the director of the film. What a shame the first and so far only comment is so negative, given the spirit of the project for which the film was made.

    This was a practically zero budget film and, sadly, we were unable to afford an actor who had been trained in the correct method of wearing first world war military uniform. In the end, my son gave up two days of his time, free of charge. Similarly, of the limited crew on the two day shoot, none of us had any first hand experience of how to wear webbing or puttees or how to correctly dress a soldier going to war in 1914. If we had enjoyed a full production budget we would would have employed an expert, such as Mr Knight, to correct such mistakes. Sadly, we had to guess. From a personal point of view, I don’t think he looked ‘dreadful’ at all. I was very proud of him.

    I’m surprised Mr Knight didn’t mention the fact that the soldier was wearing Doctor Marten boots, which were obviously wrong for the period, and that some of the hand grenades in the battlefield scene were from a different war entirely. We made do with what we had available to us.

    The one concession I will make is that he should indeed have had a haircut. Unfortunately, when we started shooting on the Sunday the barber was closed.

    I think we did a good job with the film and I like to thank everyone involved for freely giving their time. I’m very proud of what we achieved given the limited resources available to us.

  2. Pete Knight avatar
    Pete Knight

    I apologise in advance for being negative but the chap portraying the Tommy looks pretty dreadful. It is not difficult to get it right. His puttees are completely incorrect he needs a haircut and he has not been shown how to to carry/ wear his webbing correctly It is a shame when so much effort has obviously been put into this project. I hope the poorly turned out Tommy doesn’t detract from the film!

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