The Halfmoon Files

The Halfmoon Files

On 11th December 1916 Mall Singh spoke in the city of Wünsdorf, near Berlin, into the phonographic funnel. 90 years later, Mall Singh is a number on an old Shellac record in an archive one amongst hundreds of voices of colonial soldiers of the First World War. The recordings were produced as the result of an alliance between the military, the scientific community and the entertainment industry. In his experimental search "The Halfmoon Files", Philip Scheffner follows the traces of these voices to the origin of their recording. He uncovers pictures and sounds that revive the ghosts of the past. Those who pressed the record were the ones to write official history. The prisoners of war of the Halfmoon Camp disappeared from this story. Yet the story of these ghosts escapes the control of the narrator. And the ghosts do not disperse.