Synopsis:

Wilfred
A 14-minute, 35mm first drama film by
director Peter M. Kershaw

Winner of the Royal Television Society Award (NE) for Best Independent Production by an Independent Producer, and the SONY Award for Cinematography.


Wilfred combines live-action period drama with animation and other art forms - sculpture, paintings and music - to evoke a powerful and moving vision of war as witnessed in the First World War poetry of Wilfred Owen. On the 4th November 1918, aged 25 and having lived to see only five of his 100+ poems published, Owen along with many others even younger than himself, was killed in a futile exercise attempting to cross a canal in Northern France in one of the last actions of the First World War.

From the outset, Wilfred had but one aim, to make a powerful cinematic film that although short would be a big picture, a true cinematic experience.

The film’s subject matter is period but the film’s treatment is contemporary. A talented collaboration of new young artists were brought together to achieve this modern interpretation drawing inspiration from Jacob Epstein’s Rockdrill, German war artist Otto Dix, French war posters, landscapes by Paul Nash, and music in the style of E.J. Moeran.

Michael Higgs was cast as Wilfred Owen with players including contemporary poet, Tony Harrison Strange Meeting and actors Edward Fox with The parable of the Old Man and the Young Sir Derek Jacobi’s haunting Spring Offensive and Robert Duncan’s, Dulce Et Decorum Est.

This sense of innovation was something which was maintained throughout the film making process, culminating in a very exciting approach to post-production and the creation of the film’s release prints. Filmed in England, post-produced in Copenhagen, Denmark at Digital Film Labs, Wilfred caused a stir as the first UK 35mm film drama in its entirety to have utilised the new ‘digital intermediate process’ using Montreal developed Academy award winning (Matrix, Titanic) computer technology the Inferno*.

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