3D film shows devastated 1945 Warsaw

Filmmakers from the Platige Image studio in collaboration with historians from the Warsaw Uprising Museum have created a unique 3D documentary depicting the devastation of Warsaw in spring 1945, right after the end of the war in Europe.

Poland had been invaded by Nazi forces in 1939 and was occupied for 6 years. It was the German response to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising which inflicted much of the enormous damage on the city. The film was released on August 1 to mark the 66th anniversary of the beginning of the uprising.

It took 40 technicians 2 years to piece together just 5 minutes of aerial footage of the 1945 city. They first shot a contemporary view of the city from a helicopter, retracing the path that British Liberator bombers took over Warsaw when bringing supplies and weapons to the insurgents. Then they patched in images from 2,000 historical photographs and films to recreate 1945 Warsaw as accurately as possible.

Michal Gryn, from the Platige Image studio which made the film, said the team was not aware at first of the challenge before them in the form of the masses of documentary material they had to go through.

“It was a unique project to build a 3D model of authentic city ruins and make five minutes of film from it,” Gryn said. “I don’t think that anyone in the world has done this.” […]

The result is a computer simulation that shows collapsed bridges along the Vistula River, whole districts of roofless, burned-out houses and the Warsaw Ghetto as a flat sea of rubble.

You need the polarized glasses to see the 3D movie (also you need be in Warsaw), but you can get a glimpse of the amazing aerial views in this trailer:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/WaL6WYwzQFs&w=430]