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Thursday 11 June 2009. Part of Cinema Sunset.

In June’s Cinema Sunset (June the 11th 2009) the artist Kathrin Maria Wolkowicz introduced the film The Halfmoon Files by her colleague; artist and filmmaker Phillip Scheffner. In her introduction, Wolkowicz expressed her special interest in Scheffner’s investigation on the imaginative space between sound and image.

The Halfmoon Files
Release: 2007

Runtime: 87 min.

Director: Philip Scheffner

Synopsis
90 years after Mall Singh entered the British military camp in the city of Wunsdorf – his crackling words come back to life on an old shellac record kept in an archive. Amongst hundreds of voices of colonial soldiers of the First World War, his voice breaks into the present like that of a ghost. The recordings were produced in 1916 as the result of a unique alliance between the military, the scientific community and the entertainment industry. In his experimental search The Halfmoon Files, Phillip Scheffner follows the traces of these voices to the origin of their recording. Like a memory game – which remains incomplete right until the end – he uncovers pictures and sounds that revive the ghosts of the past. Sound functions as a tool or a guide for discovery. Making use of the silent film and the shellac record, Phillip Scheffner investigates the imaginative space between sound and image.

The Halfmoon Files
The Halfmoon Files