And We Were Young is an upcoming animated documentary by Andy Smetanka about American involvement in one of the final battles of World War I (trailer). The documentary will feature first person accounts of the costly Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918, and will be animated with paper cutouts and silhouettes on 8mm film. Smetanka is raising funds for the project on Kickstarter.

Thanks to Richard for the tip.

The British Council has launched an online archive of 120 documentary films on British life that were created during the 1940s. The films were originally intended as cultural propaganda to counteract negative propaganda from Nazi Germany during World War II. The films are now available for viewing and downloading. The project is a collaboration between the British Council, the BFI National Film Archive, and Google.

via MetaFilter

Barcelona-based artist Axel Brechensbauer proposes that the United States abandon its use of armed drones in favor of the artist’s “Peace Drone,” a clown-faced aircraft that would spray America’s enemies with OxyContin.

Killing foreign people with predator drones is history. Let me introduce the peace drone.
Hovering over hostile settlements or cities playing loud clown music, smiling around and delivering clouds of oxycontin. A beautiful American drug described as a pharmaceutical grade heroin.

Happy people are better than dead people and best of all, they will be addicted to you!

Thanks to Axel Brechensbauer for the tip!

Japanese designer Mayuka Nakamura created these wonderful sushi warships for her graduation project at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music.

via ITmedia & Kotaku

London-based illustrator and filmmaker Temujin Doran created The Story of Keep Calm and Carry On, a short film that tells the origin of the iconic WWII British government propaganda poster. The original poster from 1939 was rediscovered in 2000 by English secondhand bookshop, Barter Books.

via Design You Trust and Hawaiihemden Rocken

Red Tails is a new action-packed flick from Lucasfilm about the Tuskegee Airmen, the African-American Army Air Corps underdogs that fought “against all odds and became heroes” in World War II. Interesting side note, the Airmen’s aerial dog fights are what inspired George Lucas to create the Star Wars space battles. The movie, directed by Anthony Hemingway and starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Bryan Cranston, opens in theatres on January 20, 2012.

1944. To help win the war, the Pentagon brass has no choice but to consider the untested African-American pilots of the experimental Tuskegee training program.

Just as the young Tuskegee men are about to be shut down and shipped back home, they are given the ultimate chance to show their courage. These intrepid young airmen take to the skies to fight for their country – and the fate of the free world.

USA Today recently talked with executive producer George Lucas on why it took 23 years to make this movie and why it’s self-financed:

“Food Will Win The War” is a World War II animated propaganda film about the agricultural productivity of America, created by Disney animators in 1942. The film emphasizes the scale of American agriculture with some rather odd examples—for instance if the entirety of American corn production were fashioned into one giant ear, it would extend from London to the Black Sea (“and that hangs right over your head, Adolf”).

via Super Punch

We recently posted about a powerful photo essay and documentary project by photographer Brian McCarty called WAR-TOYS. Brian has traveled to various Middle East war zones to photograph and film children making art about their experiences growing up in turmoil. He is now begun a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter to help continue his efforts there.

Completing WAR-TOYS will not be possible without your support. For the project, I must travel to areas of conflict and immerse myself in diverse communities, working with humanitarian organizations to observe and collaborate with local children. It will take more time and resources than most independent artists can bear.

Every $20,000 that I’m able to raise buys me approximately three weeks of time in the Middle East to work. While it’d be amazing to raise enough to complete the twelve week project in one, extended trip, I’ll be grateful for any opportunity to continue my work one step at a time.

I believe in this project, enough to empty my savings, max-out credit cards, and put wedding plans on hold.

Brian has worked with package designer Hugh Brown to create a wonderful limited-edition series of incentive folios for donating to the Kickstarter campaign.

…the folios are housed in surplus, French military medical kits, specially repurposed. Each one is unique, inside and out. Their heavy steel cases have been filled with pieces of 7200 plastic army men, suspended in resin to form shelves for the archival prints. Each print from the edition of 50 is signed and numbered on the back. Each folio case is numbered with an engraved metal plate and includes a Certificate of Authenticity.

“Cardboard Warfare 2″ by Clinton Jones, the long awaited sequel to “Cardboard Warfare”.

A squad from Cardboard Company is sent to locate and kill a Nazi Officer responsible for the deaths of countless American lives.

via The High Definite

London-based Hasraf HaZ Dulull created Fubar, a motion comic film short depicting the “on-going political war…with cats and dogs”, using a combination of still photography and animation using The Foundry’s NUKEX 3D effects tool. His “making of” video is worth a look too.

Two factions who have been at war with each other for centuries finally come to an agreement for a form of peace, but there are certain higher political powers which would do anything to prevent this historic event from happening.

via Short of the Week

images & photo via Hasraf HaZ Dulull

Kamikaze Swimmers Finally Reach Pearl Harbor

via David Klass

image via The Onion

In just three minutes and six lines, this film short, Porcelain Unicorn by director Keegan Wilcox, packs a real emotional punch. The film won the Grand Prize in 2010 for the Philips Parallel Lines “Tell It Your Way” international competition and is about a young German boy who has a heart when it comes to a Jewish girl hiding in a storage closet during the Holocaust.

via Petapixel

Flower bombing is now made fun and easy! With the motto, Throw and Grow, the Flower Grenade originally began as a 2008 concept piece called BioGrenade in biodegradable paper from designer Tony Minh Nguyen. UK’s Snowhome, a design retailer, began creating them in smashable unfired clay with manufacturer and distributor suckUK. While the grenades may unintentionally promote hippie vandalism, they are available to purchase at Snowhome.

Gardening’s gone guerilla – You’ve seen them, you may have looked away, but you’ve seen them. Those forgotten areas of the estate, left to fall apart and fall into disrepair. The municipal scrubland where nothing can grow… Or can it? Turn the concrete jungle into a wilderness with our compacted wild flower seed grenades.

via Technabob

photo by Snowhome

The year was 1944 and WWII pilot Maj. Claude Hensinger narrowly escaped death when he jumped out of an enflamed B-29 bomber plane. He used his parachute as a pillow and to keep warm while he was waiting to be rescued. Just a few years later in 1947, Hensinger proposed to girlfriend Ruth and offered up the life-saving parachute keepsake as the fabric to create her wedding gown. Inspired by the costume dresses from Gone With the Wind, Ruth and a local seamstress created this striking wedding gown that has now earned a spot in the prestigious Smithsonian National Museum of American History collection.

photo by Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Freddie Wong shows how badass cat Mr. Meowmers won the medal of honor.

Known best for his still-life toy photographs, friend Brian McCarty is now taking a more serious direction with the WAR-TOYS project by documenting the experiences of children living in Middle East war zones and their art. Brian includes the children in the entire process, from making the (often grim) art to helping the photograph and film the project. The WAR-TOYS work-in-progress trailer is a smart and touching account of how the project came to be and why the work is important and relevant.

WAR-TOYS is a work-in-progress photo essay and documentary film by Brian McCarty. Using Brian’s unique toy photography and principles of play and art therapy, the project explores firsthand accounts of war from the perspective of children living in its day-to-day reality. Working through local humanitarian organizations in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, WAR-TOYS focuses on the latest generation of Israelis and Palestinians that has never known an existence without the constant threat of rocket attacks, air strikes, gunfire, explosions, and incursions.

photos by War Toys Project and McCarty Photoworks

See Also:

- Art-Toys, A New Book of Toy Photography by Brian McCarty
- 2008 Wall Calendar Featuring Brian McCarty’s Toy Photography
- Plastic Fantastic Featuring Brian McCarty’s Toy Photography
- Laughing Squid: Decade 2 Poster by Brian McCarty
- Laughing Squid Photo by Brian McCarty
- Brian McCarty

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Isaiah, a 10-year old Chihuahua dressed as General George Patton at the Rolling Thunder rally in Washington DC.

via Archie McPhee & The Telegraph

photo via Getty Images

“Casualties of War” by the UK-based Dorothy Collective is a disturbing series of plastic toy soldier figurines that shows some of the troubles that await returning American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The figurines are inspired by articles in the Colorado Springs Gazette and the New York Times about the plight of these American veterans.

The hell of war comes home. In July 2009 Colorado Springs Gazette published a two-part series entitled “Casualties of War”. The articles focused on a single battalion based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, who since returning from duty in Iraq had been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, drunk driving, drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides. Returning soldiers were committing murder at a rate 20 times greater than other young American males. A separate investigation into the high suicide rate among veterans published in the New York Times in October 2010 revealed that three times as many California veterans and active service members were dying soon after returning home than those being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We hear little about the personal hell soldiers live through after returning home.

via who killed bambi?

photos via Dorothy Collective

You might know about the War Dogs, but cats can also play a significant role in military operations. Slate takes an inside look at The Pentagon’s top-secret feline special-operations program.

Canadian troops show a creative way to make coffee in Afghanistan while under combat conditions.

via The Daily What

“Day at the Beach” by Travis Kurtz of comedy group Zeke Mahogany tells the story of a Frenchman’s visit to the beach on June 6, 1944, aka D-Day.

Frank Buckles, the last surviving US World War I veteran, has died at 110 years of age.

Born in Missouri in 1901 and raised in Oklahoma, Buckles visited a string of military recruiters after the United States entered the “war to end all wars” in April 1917. He was repeatedly rejected before convincing an Army captain he was 18. He was actually 16 1/2.

submitted by Graeme Wagoner-Lynch via The New York Times

photos via The Library of Congress

Lego Black Ops by Keshen

[via The High Definite]

“Germans in the Woods” by the Rauch Brothers on StoryCorps

86-year-old World War II veteran Joseph Robertson fought at the Battle of the Bulge. Over 60 years later, he still can’t forget one soldier he killed there.

via Daily Animation

90 year-old Jack tells the story of an amazing experience he had during World War II.

via Upper Playground