This essay is an illustrated montage of some points of engagement with Philip Scheffner's 2007 film, The Halfmoon Files , about the Halfmoon prisoner of war camp in Wünsdorf, Germany. The camp was an important site for anthropometric research and propaganda during World War I. The film is a ghost story and conjures a number of connections to related stories and to questions of racism, imprisonment, and war that my essay offers in response. My title—"I'm already in a sort of tomb"—is taken from Victor Serge's fictionalized autobiography, Men in Prison , whose contemporaneous account of being in prison during World War I serves as a guide along the way.
/lp/duke-university-press/i-m-already-in-a-sort-of-tomb-a-reply-to-philip-scheffner-s-the-U3xoNjm1wo