Clemens Wilhelm

THIS FILM IS SECRET

Video, 22 min, 2023

SYNOPSIS

A voyage into a particularly dark moment in history, where humans tested the first biological weapon - the anthrax bomb - on a herd of sheep on the "Island of Death" in Scotland. Set in the time period of the ongoing Holocaust and World War II, this top secret experiment was conducted with the intention of using this weapon of mass destruction on Nazi Germany.

We follow a narrator who struggles with the implications of weaponizing bacteria, which opens a crack in his life and leads him to explore a cycle of questions of morality, ethics, and human nature. All this is revealed in a stream of consciousness, as the narrator watches birds in a tree next to his balcony, and experiences the power and helplessness of the natural world being trapped inside his Berlin apartment during the pandemic lockdown, facing the invisible burdens of the past and future.

In the end, the birds offer a reminder of hope in apocalyptic times with the phrase: "Poo-Tee-Weet".