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Open Right

Michael Camilleri: One Minute’s Silence

Session Info:

This presentation is packed with visuals, including a slideshow reading of the book One Minute’s Silence, snippets of sound effect and animation. The talk includes lots of “behind-the-scenes” insights into the ideas in the book, the historical research and clear examples of how the drawings were made, from rough through to finished art. This is the perfect accompaniment to a class study of One Minute’s Silence and Gallipoli in general. This session also complements the detailed teacher’s notes and illustrator’s commentary freely available from the Allen& Unwin website.

Topics:

  • Historical aspects of Gallipoli and WW1 – a look at living conditions, soldiers’ first hand accounts, terrain and the machinery of war.
  • Imagination, empathy and the act of Remembrance – trying to reach the past, trying to understand war, relating the past to the present and conflicts of the past to those of today.
  • Ideas and techniques of illustration – portraits, comics, maps, technical drafting; why they were chosen and how they were created.

About the book:

One Minute’s Silence is a book about Gallipoli and Remembrance unlike any other. The author, David Metzenthen, asks readers to imagine soldiers’ experiences from both sides of a conflict, to empathize with defenders and invaders in turn.

Illustrator Michael Camilleri brings this to life with an array of techniques and ideas: comics, maps, technical illustrations of war machinery and the use of contemporary year 12 students in place of both turks and diggers.