A Dominican priest and archivist unearthed old footage of adorable puppies at an unidentified place in the Philippines.
Archivist Gregory Schnakenberg of the Dominican House of Studies posted the black-and-white recording on Twitter on January 7.
While working in our archives, I found an old metal box. Inside was a long-forgotten roll of silent 8mm film marked “The Philippines 1942”
Excited at possibly discovering lost WW II footage, I sent it to specialists for care and digitization.
Yesterday, it came back. On it was: pic.twitter.com/Wvlla8k21R
— Gregory Schnakenberg (@GSchnakenberg) January 7, 2023
In his tweet, Schnakenberg said that he found this footed by accident.
He was working in their archives when he discovered a long-form roll of silent 8mm film marked with “The Philippines 1942”. The film was inside an old metal box.
Schnakenberg said that he initially expected it to be unseen war footage.
“Excited at possibly discovering lost WW II footage, I sent it to specialists for care and digitization,” the priest tweeted.
What came out of the restoration was more than what he had hoped for.
The short video showed a group of puppies doing normal puppy stuff—playful shoving, running after one another, tumbling and sniffing their environment.
Schnakenberg’s post soon gained some buzz on Twitter. So far, it has garnered 31,400 retweets, 1,547 quote retweets and 206,300 likes.
The video itself earned 2.7 million views on the platform.
Twitter user @ActionMovieKid uploaded a colorized version of this clip and posted it in the comments section.
colorized for fun🐶 pic.twitter.com/KzoH5XaL5c
— ActionMovieDad (@ActionMovieKid) January 9, 2023
Other Twitter users also expressed how impressed they were that someone at that time took the time to record moments of puppies instead of the war.
“Honestly, I find this footage to be more important than a new WW II footage because it shows a more intimate slice of life of the population. This one can be used to explore the day-to-day life of civilians, something I find more interesting than war,” a Twitter user said.
“The thing here is that due to the predominance of cameras in our world, we often forget how much relative effort it took to film in the 1940s. Yet someone put aside film in order to film some puppies playing,” another tweeted.
The video also reached the online forum r/Philippines where Redditors gushed over the “chonky” puppies in 1942.
Dictionary.com defines “chonky” as a slang word that describes animals that are “adorably round, plump, pudgy, or otherwise heavier than average.”
“Chonk overload,” one Redditor said.
“It is but a chonk war,” another Redditor said.
Amid the seemingly innocent picture painted by the recording, the Philippines was under siege by Japanese forces that year.
The Imperial Japanese Army occupied the country from 1942 to 1945, when war crimes committed by the Japanese force have been recorded in Philippine history.
