Behind The Stone

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Young people working with Cardiff film company Cinetig, have created an eye-catching ‘double tribute’ to scores of local people who lost their lives in World War One.

The children didn’t merely help animate Behind the Stone, a piquant Heritage Lottery funded which is a film tribute to the town’s war dead. They also worked with artist Carlos Pinatti, using tile and plaster, to create their own eloquent memorial, incorporating evocative lines from the great World War One poet, Siegfried Sassoon.

That memorial and film feature in a May 2008 display at Cyfarthfa Castle Museum.

The film’s producer-director Jane Hubbard spent hours researching wars and the history of their Memorials and delving into Great War poetry conveying the passion and purgatory of trench warfare. Her interest was first stirred by vivid stories told by her German-born mother Edith, who lived through the Nazi regime.

Those who see Behind the Stone won’t forget Sassoon’s cautionary and chilling refrain on the pupil’s new memorial. “Have you forgotten yet?” There are also impressive animated cut- out silhouettes of soldiers going ‘over the top’ from the trenches. Adding to the intense effect is the music of Hugh Fowler and John Hardy (composer of Oscar- winning Welsh feature film Hedd Wyn) and charcoal and sand animation inspired by the anguished war images of German artist Otto Dix.

The defacing of Merthyr’s Memorial and obliteration of St Tydfil’s statue at the memorial’s centre struck a raw nerve in the community and clinched Hubbard’s intention to make Behind the Stone. Cyfarthfa Junior School and the Forsythia Youth Project on Merthyr’s Gurnos Estate were involved in helping make the film together with fellow Cinetig animators Gerald Conn and Jeremy Roberts.

Even defaced, the 77- year- old Memorial (to be rebuilt after a £40,000 investment) was still a “marvellous dramatic monument” Hubbard stresses. “ The graffiti somehow added to the drama of the figures and gave it a slightly unearthly quality,” says Hubbard.

The film involved conscientious preparation to immerse youngsters more deeply in the project. Cyfarthfa Junior pupils visited the Whitehall Cenotaph – “I don’t think many had previously linked that monument with the wars and loss of life.”

The youngsters also went aboard World War Two warship HMS Belfast in the Thames and visited the Imperial War Museum where they marvelled at the weight of weaponry and the dirt and discomfort Great War soldiers faced in the trenches.

The project involved animation and clay modelling workshops as well as writing workshops with Merthyr born novelist, Des Barry. He encouraged the Cyfarthfa Junior school pupils to write their own war poetry and helped the Forsythia Youth project to write a drama script where they re-enact for the film the kind of drinking/drugs binges which fuelled the Memorial’s destruction. The DVD contains two ‘Behind the Scenes’ documentaries funded by the Wales Film Agency.