{"id":302,"date":"2016-11-15T08:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T07:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/?p=302"},"modified":"2016-11-15T08:00:55","modified_gmt":"2016-11-15T07:00:55","slug":"follow-a-pgr-blog-exeter-film-pgr-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/2016\/11\/15\/follow-a-pgr-blog-exeter-film-pgr-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow a PGR Blog: Exeter Film PGR Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Chris Grosvener is a PGR in Film researching the role of the cinema as it intersected with the lives of those who served for Britain\u00a0during the First World War. The post first appear on the new <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/exeterfilmpg\/2016\/11\/11\/soldiers-cinemas-and-the-first-world-war-by-chris-grosvenor\/\">Exeter Film PGR Community blog<\/a>. Head over to find out more about PGR research in Film at Exeter!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/299\/2016\/11\/Preparing-an-Outdoor-Screen-672x372-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-304\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/299\/2016\/11\/Preparing-an-Outdoor-Screen-672x372-1-300x166.jpg\" alt=\"Preparing-an-Outdoor-Screen-672x372\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/299\/2016\/11\/Preparing-an-Outdoor-Screen-672x372-1-300x166.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/299\/2016\/11\/Preparing-an-Outdoor-Screen-672x372-1.jpg 672w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Every day I read stories about men suffering through the horrors of the First World War. I should correct that: they\u2019re not stories, they are real experiences, real lives and real facts. Necessarily, my research on the provision of film entertainment for British and Dominion soldiers during WWI means learning much about the lives of those who fought and died for their country: both the good times and the bad. As a researcher, it means confronting the harsh realities of war on a day-to-day basis, and despite being a century removed from the experiences found in the war diaries, newspapers and other documents\u00a0I examine, the images and experiences I come across are no less harrowing, heartbreaking or poignant. Reading through the war diaries of a particular division or battalion, you begin to feel the ebbs and flows of the conflict, the highs and lows, the much needed periods of \u201crest\u201d behind the lines and the dreadful anticipation\u00a0of returning to the trenches. The casualty lists and statistics are staggering in themselves, but it is the personal narratives of loss and suffering that resonate the most. First-hand accounts of the conflict \u2013 descriptions of daily life on the front lines \u2013 places everything in front of you in a very real way. The immediacy, emotion and honesty that are found in the faded lines of a soldier\u2019s diary, a diary you hold in your hands one-hundred years after it had made its way through the horrific conditions of trench warfare \u2013 even if its owner was not as fortunate \u2013 puts everything in perspective.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that the same soldier visited a divisional cinema in the hope of forgetting, for a time at least, the horrors of the war is an equally moving sentiment. It\u2019s very easy for us in the 21st Century to look back on the people who endured and suffered through the Great War, either at home or on the front, as being far removed from ourselves. Their lives must have been so different, we tell ourselves. Their interests and habits, how they passed the time and enjoyed themselves, seem so archaic. Many people today would find it difficult to place themselves in the shoes of such a person.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_71\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-71 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/exeterfilmpg\/files\/2016\/11\/Outdoor-Screen-2.jpg\" alt=\"Outdoor Screen 2\" width=\"787\" height=\"411\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An open air cinema on the Western Front. Source: Imperial War Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>However,\u00a0if I were to take one thing away from my research up to this point, it would be that the presence of the cinema on the front lines has compacted the distance in space and time between myself and those who fought in the war. Of course, the generation of men and women who experienced the war are exactly the same as us, with the same fears, hopes and desires. But for me, there is something very moving about the fact that whilst living through a conflict of such unprecedented scale and brutality, soldiers would turn to the cinema as a form of comfort and escape from the immediate dangers and disturbing sights of the battlefield.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Fancy seeing a cinema show within the enemy\u2019s shell fire!\u2019 one soldier proclaimed in 1915. His disbelief may equal our own today, perhaps. The idea that the bulky, impractical technology needed to project film made its way on to the front line is a baffling notion in and of itself. Yet, dozens, even hundreds of makeshift cinemas did find a home on the battlefields of the First World War, established in dilapidated barns, shoddy huts or even in the open air. These cinemas, and the films they showed, most notably the films of Charlie Chaplin and other contemporary comedians, brightened the lives and raised the morale of those in the midst of the veritable hell on earth that the war had fostered. They turned to the cinema to \u2018relieve the monotony and depression of trench warfare\u2019. \u2018It\u2019s like being at home\u2019 wrote another soldier, a sentiment shared by many. \u2018Oh how we laughed \u2013 laughed as we had never laughed before\u2019 proclaimed another about the antics of Chaplin. Like it is today, the cinema was a place where soldiers relaxed, met their friends and shared a laugh or two. On a day like today, it\u2019s important to remember that these people were just the same as us, sharing the same interests and passions. Even with the distance of a century, soldiers would flock to front line cinemas just as we visit our local Vue or Picturehouse, for comfort, for friendship, to enjoy the film on screen and to escape, for a time at least, from the world outside.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/humanities.exeter.ac.uk\/english\/research\/students\/chrisgrosvenor\/\">Read Chris\u2019s research profile here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Grosvener is a PGR in Film researching the role of the cinema as it intersected with the lives of those who served for Britain\u00a0during [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[47,71,73],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Follow a PGR Blog: Exeter Film PGR Community - Doctoral College<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/2016\/11\/15\/follow-a-pgr-blog-exeter-film-pgr-community\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Follow a PGR Blog: Exeter Film PGR Community - Doctoral College\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Chris Grosvener is a PGR in Film researching the role of the cinema as it intersected with the lives of those who served for Britain\u00a0during [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/2016\/11\/15\/follow-a-pgr-blog-exeter-film-pgr-community\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Doctoral College\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-11-15T07:00:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/299\/2016\/11\/Preparing-an-Outdoor-Screen-672x372-1-300x166.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/2016\/11\/15\/follow-a-pgr-blog-exeter-film-pgr-community\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/2016\/11\/15\/follow-a-pgr-blog-exeter-film-pgr-community\/\",\"name\":\"Follow a PGR Blog: Exeter Film PGR Community - 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