Watch Prelude to War

John Ford filmed the battle from the roof of a power station and was wounded doing it; eighteen minutes of 16mm colour.

Australian newsreel from the Kokoda Track in New Guinea, shot by Damien Parer, who was killed two years later.

The Soviet account of the counter-offensive that stopped the Wehrmacht outside Moscow, re-cut for American cinemas.

The British account of El Alamein, cut from footage shot by cameramen who went forward with the infantry.

A year aboard an American aircraft carrier in the Pacific, filmed in colour by the crew themselves.

The Allied advance from Normandy to the Elbe, assembled by Carol Reed and Garson Kanin from a thousand cameramen.

Al Gore's slideshow on climate change; the cherry picker up the CO2 graph.

A Kentucky coal strike in 1973, filmed from the picket line; Barbara Kopple's Oscar.