The Half-Moon Files > > By Sushma Joshi > published in Kantipur Online > > I happened, by accident, to hear about 'The Half-Moon Files.' The > Berlinale, Berlin's international film festival, is the biggest in > Europe after Cannes, and there were 250 films competing for attention. > But the woman who told me about it was certain I would be interested. > It was about the POW (Prisoner of War) camp in Berlin after WW 1 and > had interesting anthropological elements, she said. 'It is about > Indians in the POW camp,' she said. As soon as she said 'Indians', I > knew I had to watch it. It was the last day of the festival, but I had > no hesitation chucking my ticket to the Hongkong action movie and > heading to the Arsenal, a theatre located in the basement of the > Filmhause of Berlin. > > The documentary was in German, which I do not speak or understand. But > it was probably the most interesting film I, as a Nepali, watched in > the entire festival. The reason was this-- the film, an ostentious > 'ghost story' in which filmmaker Philip Scheffener goes out to track > down the voices of prisoners-of- war imprisoned in a camp in Berlin > after WW1, features old archival sound files, a four minute film > footage, and a treasure trove of photography. > > The filmmaker spends a great deal of time shooting the bureacrat at > the Indian Embassy and the difficulties he encounters trying to get a > shooting permit to India. This lavish attention to Indian bureacracy > seems to lead him astray. For what I saw on the screen were not > 'Indians', but face after face with distinctive 'Nepali' features. > They had names like Dhanbahadur and surnames like Budathoki. They said > they were 'Singhs', but the accent--rough mountain voices with a > Nepali accent, gave them away as not the fieresome Tigers of the Sikh > Punjabi regiments but Gorkhalis who had descended from the hills to > make a living in the British regiments. > > There was an old photograph of a court with men in Nepali topis. The > four minute footage, the only extanct one as far as I could tell, > features a Dashain ceremony in which men perform a vedic ceremony > before a goat is taken to be sacrificed. In the background, > there is a dance performed by dhami-jhankri. Anybody who has taken a > look at contemporary shamanistic cermonies in Nepal will instantly > recognize this cermony. This was not Dusshera, as the filmmaker > explained to me later, but Dashain--a very distinct form of > celebration with its own geographical and cultural connotations. The > causal disregard that most Indians hold for cultural distinctions > between Nepalis, who have a distinct national and geographical > reality, and Indians, was apparent in the way the researchers in India > had informed the filmmaker. The Sikhs stand around watching but there > is a little excited scamper as a group of Nepali men cluster around > the priests who perform the fire ceremony, just before the white goat > is brought to be sacrified. > > The film also tracked the way scientists used the POW camp as a rich > treasure trove of ethnic groups to practise their first > anthropological and ethnological experiments on. They measured body > parts to figure out why the Germans were not as hardy as their > enemies. This was the beginnings of the scientific racism of Nazi > Germany which would manifest twenty years later, with tragic and > far-reaching consequences. > > A german girl sitting next to me was kind enough to translate. The > film ends with a funny story--although the filmmaker has never been to > India, he appears in several news reports in India, 'shooting in > Andhra Pradesh' on this story. The filmmaker, it appeared, was open to > the humor of narratives, to the ways in which stories are made up and > in which reality is often constructed and open to interpretation. I > wondered how he would react if I told him his story was not complete. > > The ghost may have been tracked, but he seems to have left some > important details out. Did he know that about fifty percent of the > people he shows as POWs are not Indians, but Nepalis? So I asked him > in the Q and A. Had his research assistant in India, by any chance, > not told him that the men were Nepalis, speaking Nepali? > > The filmmaker, disappointingly, said that he had been aware of that > they were Gurkhas, speaking a mixture of Khas and Hindustani, but that > he had not felt it was important enough to distinguish between the > many different groups from India. This would have complicated the > story. I pointed out that Nepal was already a different nation state > in the 1700s, far ahead of the Indians, but this apparently was not > historically important to distinguish. It seemed incredible to me that > an European researcher at this day and age, working with serious > historical materials, would feel this was not pertinent, but > apparently such was the case. The filmmaker talked a great deal about > colonialism. I sat in the audience and thought of the irony of how the > Nepalese reality, once again, had become submerged into a larger > Indian one, but the critic of colonialism couldn't fathom this > important distinction. > > There were large segments of black footage during which one can hear > the voices talking. As I heard the Nepali voices from almost a hundred > years ago talking about how their King would recall them back to their > homeland from the terrors of Germany, I thought about how things > haven't really changed. Nepal sends its men and women out to Malaysia, > Korea, Iraq and Jordan these days, instead of Germany. But the faces > and the voices are still the same, and the simple faith that their > country, no matter how impotent, will save them eventually is still > the same. > > 'The Half-Moon Files' moved me, not only because the voices from so > far ago talking about displacement and loss were never heard by their > countrymen, or understood by their captors, in their own time. It also > moved me because this remains the case to this day--that Nepalis, to > this day, remain an invisible group in the global conciousness.