"There once was a man.
This man came into the European war.
Germany captured this man.
He wishes to return to India.
If God has mercy, he will make peace soon.
This man will go away from here."
Mall Singh's crackling words are heard as he spoke into the phonographic funnel on 11th December 1916 in the city of Wünsdorf, near Berlin.
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.
We are happy to screen once again the rivetting documentary: The Halfmoon Files by Philip Scheffner as part of the German contribution to the 4th Bangalore Literature Festival.
The film is an audiovisual study exploring the links between politics, colonialism, science and the media. The study is based on visual and audio footage documenting the stories of Indian and North African prisoners of war from the “Halfmoon” camp set up near Berlin during the First World War. It is a film about missing links, omissions and the construction of history, featuring protagonists who are, for the most part, invisible, but whose presence is nevertheless palpable. In other words: a ghost story.
