VE Day in Colour: Countdown to Peace

8th May 2020 will mark 75 years since the world celebrated as Victory in Europe was announced. In commemoration of the war efforts and the lives lost in the battle for freedom, we relive the last key days and events of the final moments leading to Victory, including memories of those who were there, in colour. VE Day was celebrated across the world, and this film aims to show the final steps and emotions that came with this.

Archive footage from World War II is almost exclusively black and white. Many colour films during this time were lost in personal archives, donated to archive houses, & museums from personal collections. Coleman Television has worked with collections to bring you VE Day on the Home Front and beyond – in full colour. Archive footage, digitised, restored and in full colour, sits alongside newly recorded interviews with some of the dwindling numbers of those who lived through this momentous day.

This film will compact the key hours leading up to the announcement, the announcement itself and the celebrations following it, in a dramatic style that walks audiences through a countdown of the timeline that changed the world.

We bring incredible footage, unseen for decades, to life, along with memories of those who lived and worked through the war and its end. First hand audio recordings of those who were there and their memories are re-told in this unique film. We reveal the noise, the smells, the reunions and the reactions from loved ones. Fully colourised footage from the streets of Paris, London and New York alongside the rural celebrations on farms, in villages, and even from areas that were still under partial occupation, as well as the moments of liberation and freedom. This film loyally and sensitively recaptures the hope for free nations into what Churchill described as ‘The broad, sunlit uplands’, with a timeline of the efforts across of Europe in the final week leading up to VE Day, 1945.