"The program at the commemorative ceremony at the The Australian War Memorial in Canberra will have a focus on the First World War and the role that Australians played in the conflict together with Serbian soldiers especially Australian Army nurses who were sent to serve in Salonika in the later part of the WWI. Many of them are awarded with highest War Medals of the Serbian Kingdom."said Mr Petrovic for SBS Serbian.
As a part of WWI Commemoration in Canberra "The Long Road to War" - Feature-length documentary about the origins of WWI will be shown. The film is mostly in English, with some German, French, and Russian spoken by the historians.
Coming from a country that lost over 20% of its population in the Great War, the Serbian director Miloš Škundrić says he was shocked to learn how little he and his generation knew about the reason behind this “seminal catastrophe of the 20th century”.
The director stated:
“Although there were many books on what the historians take for one-of-the-most-important-topics-ever, it was surprising to me that the origins of the war have been subject to almost no film at all over the past 100 years. Granted, the subject was mostly incorporated into the documentaries that cover the war itself and briefly so, or confined only to 1914.
But you can’t really understand why the killing of an heir by his subject should spark a world war, if you don’t go further back into the past, can you? These were the reasons for this film, and I had set the goals high, in terms of both production quality and historical authenticity.
The film’s story starts back in the late 19th century. Even though the wars during the 1870s ended, the peace in Europe was frail. The German general-staff were calling for a new war ever since 1875, and so it nearly erupted in 1905 and 1911 over Morroco, and in 1908 and 1912/13 over the Balkans. There’s always something that deterred it, but since 1912 the war is on its final approach.” (Source War History Online)
Painters / Warriors / Witnesses is a research and exhibition project featuring over 100 paintings of official war painters and an almost equal number of photographs by official photographers in the Serbian Army. The exhibition will be showcased in Canberra as a part of the WWI Commemoration. The exhibition also includes the works of war correspondents and photo-amateurs, women painters, volunteer nurses, as well as the works of other artists who were participants in the war, either as conscripts or volunteers. Head of the Project is Žana Gvozdenović.
Related - Interview to Ms Zana Gvozdenovic
Painters, Warriors, Witnesses
