The Best Work You May Never See: Happiness Brussels Tells The Story of "ReStory" For Canon, Belgium's Flood Victims

This film from agency Happiness Brussels (part of the FCB family) delves into the “ReStory” project supported by Canon. The initiative is designed to help Belgium recover from the toll taken by the devastating floods that took place in mid-July. Wallonia in Belgium, and more specifically the province of Liège, was among the worst hit. Excessive rains caused the Vesdre, Ourthe and Meuse rivers to no longer be able to contain the huge quantities of water they carried. Literally everything was washed away: 224,000 houses damaged or destroyed, 12,000 cars damaged, and countless pieces of furniture ruined. Unfortunately, many lives were lost as well. Since then and until today, the region is still suffering from this flood trauma.

Also damaged were photographs which carried deep emotional value. The memories linked to these photos are priceless. Thousands of photos were severely damaged by the sudden and rapid flooding. With the backing of Canon, the “ReStory” project aims to restore as many photos as possible--representing a small but valuable contribution to the emotional recovery of the region.

Geoffrey Hantson, chief creative officer of Happiness Brussels, related, “During the huge clean-up, we saw some very emotional interviews on the TV news. Many victims said that the floods wiped out not only whole neighborhoods, but also thousands of memories. Among them: thousands of photos washed away or severely damaged. Of course, the severity is incomparable to the number of lives lost, and incomparable to the financial losses, but the emotional value of these photos is nonetheless very high. And there’s where we could help, together with Canon and other partners, to restore as many of the damaged photographs as possible. To contribute in a small but relevant way to the emotional recovery of the region.”

The restoration of the images is a joint initiative between Canon, the “Object Care” laboratory and numerous volunteer digital retouchers. The photographs are restored to their original state as far as possible, using a drying and smoothing process, followed by manual digital corrections. 

This short film was directed and edited by Simon Schuurman of Happiness.