Here’s some remarkable colorized footage of the post-World War I remains of Flanders taken from the air in an open Bi-Plane. The colorization and sound bed (vintage airplane noise of course) give it a hauntingly realistic sense. Much as grainy old black and white footage has its own eerie charm, the reality that good colorization brings to events of one-hundred years ago or more is an excellent step in bringing old film to new life. History becomes a lot more real when one sees it like this.

So what’s the story about how this film came into existence? I quote from the YouTuber who provided this invaluable piece of footage:

Following the Armistice, in early 1919, Trolley de Prévaux and filmmaker Lucien Le Saint undertook a pivotal flight over the devastated Western Front, from the Belgian coastline to the French citadel city of Verdun. They meticulously recorded the war-torn landscape for posterity. This footage, a testament to the horrific destruction of the First World War and it serves as a grim warning of where the world is possibly heading today. This footage would remain unseen by the public for nearly a century until a 2010 BBC documentary presented by Fergal Keane called ‘The First World War From Above’. This remarkable HD colorized historical documentary film taken in 1919 features pilot Jacques Marie Charles Trolley de Prévaux (1888-1944) who twenty years later would be fighting in the French Resistance. He and his wife Lotka Leitner were both executed by the Gestapo in 1944 just as the Allies were liberating Paris. Filmmaker Lucien Le Saint can also be briefly seen in this extended film shot over Flanders fields and the ruins of Ypres in Belgium. We also see footage from the Western Front in France and the ruins of the cities of Reims, Mont-Saint-Éloi, Bailleul and Mont Saint Michel ( which was occupied by Germany).