By Casey Neill
A new project to preserve Australia’s military history will largely be filmed in Dandenong.
Dandenong RSL president John Wells has thrown his support behind The Anzac 100 and opened the sub-branch’s doors to filmmaker Val Athanassiou.
Mr Athanassiou plans to interview 100 veterans from various conflicts about their achievements on and off the battlefield in the lead-up to next year’s 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
The result will be available to the community free of charge.
Mr Wells said it was critically important that the RSL preserves the past, but with a view to the future.
“What he’s doing is preserving important chunks of our past and our present in a way that will make it available for the future,” he said.
He will appear in the trailer Mr Athanassiou is preparing to promote the project.
Mr Wells said veterans from various time periods had a lot in common, including “that feeling of intense-gut-wrenching fear”.
“Once you feel it you never forget it,” he said.
He hopes people who see the finished product will realise “that veterans are ordinary people like everybody else”.
“They’re part of a long Australian tradition of putting your hand up when there’s a need,” he said.
Mr Athanassiou wanted to reflect his passion for military history through film and his filmmaker friend Marcus Cloherty “had a very similar love for the military and for the history, but his point of view was more along the lines of wanting to talk to veterans about their experiences”.
“I moved here from New South Wales about 14 months ago,” he said.
“I happened across an op shop one day, in Boronia. A veterans’ op shop.”
He spoke to store manager and Australian Peacekeeper and Peacemaker Veterans’ Association (APPVA) vice president Michael Quinn about his idea.
“We wish to educate and inform the next generation of enlisters, women and men, on the challenges they may face, to be captured on film for the ages,” he said.
Mr Quinn quickly jumped on board and put Mr Athanassiou in touch with Mr Wells and Dandenong RSL manager Greg Betros.
“In the last couple of months the support that’s come out of the woodwork is just astonishing,” Mr Athanassiou said.
He’ll film a concept video to help with funding applications in the next month.
“We’ve got the venue, we’ve got the cinematographer, we’ve got four of the possibly eight candidates confirmed, and we have a very gracious donation from Dandenong RSL to help us fund that,” he said.
“We’re going to continue pursuing funding.”
He’ll film the interviews proper over the rest of the year with help from Films4Change.
“We can’t rush this,” he said.
“We’re only going to get one shot at it and we have to get it right.”
