Documentary Film "Song of the Various-Minded Man"

Aim

A feature documentary from a soldier's own films, photographs and writings. An unseen archive. A true Odyssey, from WW1 to Burma and home.

Gassed on the Western Front. Ambushed in Waziristan. Fought his way out of Burma. Went back to silence the Japanese guns. Then spent years trying to get home.

The films as I found them, scattered in a chest that hadn't been opened in many, many years.

In November 2025, while clearing my mother’s house, I took custody of an old family chest.

Inside were more than twenty reels of 8mm film, photograph albums, journals, letters, campaign reports and the papers of my grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Marcus Witherow, Royal Artillery.

I knew some of it existed, but had no idea what I had inherited.

Around five hours of cine film, much of it colour shot between 1938 and 1948: India before the war, the Mountain Artillery, trains, horses, gardens, ships, soldiers, family life and the long voyages home.

One of Marcus’ guns - 7th (Bengal) Mountain Battery, Waziristan 1919 - 20

Where the camera could not go, he wrote.

Alongside the films is the written record of the things he could not film: the Western Front, Waziristan, the catastrophic retreat from Burma in 1942 and his later war against the Japanese artillery.

I have spent most of my working life making films. Once I began to understand what was in that chest, making this one became almost inevitable.

2nd Lt TM Witherow, RGA - 1917, shortly before he deployed to the Western Front

I thought I had inherited a military archive, but I had really inherited a life.

Aged nineteen when he went to the Western Front, he later served with the Indian Mountain Artillery, fought on the North-West Frontier, commanded 23rd Mountain Battery through the retreat from Burma and returned to silence the Japanese guns.

But the films show something the campaign histories cannot: the world around him.

India in colour. The men he served with. Mountain guns and mules. Quetta. Railways. Fishing boats off Karachi. Polo, skiing, gardens and friends. Then, after the war, troopships crossing the world as armies, prisoners and families made their way home.

The archive has been professionally scanned by Cinelab UK at 2.5K resolution, allowing these tiny 8mm images to be seen properly at cinema scale.

A few seconds had been seen before, when the Imperial War Museum licensed some of the film for ITV’s VE Day in Colour in 2005. Most of it has never been seen publicly.

Then I took the story back to India

I have just returned from India, where I filmed two remarkable men whose lives connect directly with the world preserved in the archive.

Lt Gen NS Brar & Maj Gen R Prakash, filmed for the documentary in India, September 2026

Major-General Rajendra Prakash, now 97, served in the Mountain Artillery tradition my grandfather had known.

Lieutenant-General Narinder S. Brar served under him and later wrote Pick of the Army, the history of the Indian Mountain Artillery.

Filming them required formal permission from the Indian Ministry of Defence and Ministry of External Affairs.

Their voices matter because this cannot simply be the story of a British officer looking back at India. The regiments survived independence. The traditions continued. The story belongs to both countries.

But India gave me something else as well.

Mai Hermione “Poppy” Montagu, 1892 - 1985

In Shimla, hoping to understand more of the social world behind my grandfather’s films, I found paintings of his still hanging in houses he had known almost a century ago, and followed a trail surrounding Hermione “Poppy” Montagu, an old family friend who remained in Simla until her death in 1985.

What emerged suggests that their relationship may have been far more important than anyone in my family ever openly discussed.

I went looking for historical context. I came home with evidence of a long-hidden love story.

And that has changed the film.

One of Marcus’ paintings, still hanging on a wall in Shimla, a century later

The film

Song of the Various-Minded Man takes its title and structure from T. E. Shaw’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey. That began as a way of organising an extraordinary sequence of journeys. It has become something more.

This is a film about war and survival, certainly, but increasingly it is about memory, love, exile and the pull of home.

My grandfather’s own words provide the narration. His films and photographs provide the world he saw.

There is no cine film of the Western Front, Waziristan or the Burma retreat. Where no contemporary image exists, artist Simon Heath is creating illustrated sequences grounded in the surviving documents, photographs and eyewitness accounts.

This film is already being made

This is not a proposal waiting for funding before anything happens.

The entire cine archive has been professionally scanned.

The research and transcription are well advanced.

The Indian interviews have now been filmed.

23 Mountain Battery training on the Northwest Frontier, 1940

Dr Spencer Jones, the officially appointed historian of the Royal Artillery, is contributing to the film.

The Royal Artillery Institution has formally endorsed the project, and the Royal Artillery Museum is supporting its production.

I have funded the project myself and through my family to bring it this far.

The Crowdfunder is what allows me to finish it properly.

What the £25,000 will do

The target covers both major work already personally funded and the remaining production and post-production needed to complete the film:

• £7,000: professional scanning of the complete film archive at Cinelab UK, already paid
• £3,500: filming in India, now completed
• £8,000: professional audio post-production and final mix
• £2,000: music composition and licensing
• £1,800: remaining filming and restoration
• £2,700: reward fulfilment, payment processing and production contingency

Creative fees for the director and illustrator are not being taken from this campaign. They will be recouped last, if the finished film eventually generates revenue.

23 Mountain Battery on parade, Quetta 1939

About me

I’m Dominic Witherow, one of the subject’s grandsons and a graduate of The London Film School.

I have spent more than twenty years working professionally as a filmmaker.

For this film I am writer, director, producer, editor and, perhaps most importantly, the person who inherited the responsibility for this extraordinary archive.

The project began with a chest in my mother’s house.

It has already taken me from the Royal Artillery archives to India and the Himalayan foothills of Shimla.

Now I need your help to finish the journey.

Please back the film at whatever level suits you, and if the story catches your imagination, please share it with at least one other person who might feel the same.

After nearly eighty years in private hands, this archive is finally being seen.

Help me bring it to the screen!

Nostos, 1948

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 1st December 2026 at 8:53am