‘DON’T WORRY, WE WILL ALL DIE SUCCESSFULLY’
Dive into the thought-provoking world of filmmaker Clemens Wilhelm with this special film program at Narture:
In THIS FILM IS SECRET, a narrator reflects on one of humanity’s darkest moments, grappling with themorality of biological warfare during WWII, while facing his own personal struggles in lockdown. A stunning meditation on history, ethics, and the unseen burdens of the past, this film ends with the birds’ call of hope: “Poo-Tee-Weet.”
KIKI THE WAR DOG tells the incredible true story of a black-and-white fox terrier who journeys through WWII, transitioning from soldier to pacifist. Kiki’s story challenges our perceptions of war, peace, and the animal spirit within us all.
Finally, in A HORSE WITH WHEELS, Wilhelm explores the origins of art, the Ice Age, and the link between humanity’s first carvings and our modern brains. Shot across breathtaking landscapes, this film asks: Have we really changed since our ancestors created the first “useless tool”?
Join us for a powerful cinematic experience that blends history, philosophy, and nature—narrated with Wilhelm’s unique perspective.
ABOUT Clemens Wilhelm (*1980, Berlin) is an artist and film maker based in Berlin. With a calm, often hypnotic narrative style and musical compositions, his works delve into psychological and philosophical depths. His films and installations are shown internationally, including at the Centre Pompidou Paris, CFCCA Manchester, Rockbund Art Museum Shanghai, Guangdong Times Museum, OCT Art Museum Shenzhen, CCA Glasgow, Berlinische Galerie, WRO 15th Media Art Biennale, and Loop Festival Barcelona.
INFO ON THE THREE FILMS:
Clemens Wilhelm | THIS FILM IS SECRET | 22 min | 2023
We follow a narrator on his 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. The narrator struggles with the implications of weaponising 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 bird soffer a reminder of hope in apocalyptic times with the phrase: “Poo-Tee-Weet”.
Clemens Wilhelm | KIKI THE WAR DOG | 23 min | 2013
Kiki was a black-and-white fox terrier who lived during World War 2. A born Parisian, Kiki is adopted by the German Army and travels through Europe all the way to Russia in the winter of 1942. After getting seriously ill, he settles down in Germany and becomes a pacifist and father. This exceptional story is reconstructed from photos, 8mm-film and a written account of Kiki’s extraordinary life. Kiki changes in the perception of his contemporaries from French to German and from soldier to pacifist. His animal instinct lets him overcome the obstacles of war, poverty, peace and parenthood – and makes us think.
Clemens Wilhelm | A HORSE WITH WHEELS | 29 min | 2017
Shot in Ice Age caves in France, within a herd of 1000 reindeer in North-Norway, on the glaciers of Iceland, and the vast landscapes of Scotland, A HORSE WITH WHEELS tells the story of a journey and a seemingly impossible approximation: how can we get closer to our ancestor who made the first art object? Does it help to see the same images? Have we changed at all since the Ice Age, or is progress a deception? What do we know about our past and why do we want to believe that our ancestors were primitive? Is a camera so different from a carving knife? The “Swimming Reindeer” are a reminder of the last global warming that humanity had to survive. Was this mayor human crisis the trigger for the invention of art?
