A first-hand documentary
The story was already there. The task is to let it speak.
Song of the Various-Minded Man weaves T. M. Witherow’s own writings — including his Waziristan field journal, Burma campaign account and navigation records — over his own cine footage and photographs.
Where the camera could not follow him, particularly the Western Front and the retreat from Burma, original illustrated sequences by Simon Heath will bridge the visual gap in a graphic-novel language developed for the film.
The structure
An Odyssey, biographical rather than decorative.
The narrative is structured around T. E. Shaw’s 1932 prose translation of Homer’s Odyssey, from whose opening the film takes its title. The framing is not ornamental: this is a story of a long journey through war, empire, absence and return, told through the words and images left by the man who lived it.
Shared history
British and Indian voices.
The project has received formal approval from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Defence. Interviews in India bring the later Indian Mountain Artillery tradition into conversation with the world Witherow entered as a young British officer.
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