Michael Venus

The Völklingen Ironworks flooded in red light
Copyright: Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte | Oliver Dietze

Michael Venus Fluter BpB CC BY NC ND 4

Michael Venus Fluter BpB CC BY NC ND 4
Copyright: Fluter / bpb | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Born in 1976 in Jena, Germany
Lives and works in Weimar, Germany

Work

Roentgen

Roentgen
Copyright: © Hamburg Media School

Michael Venus's 2009 short film Roentgen is set in 1896 against the backdrop of the recently discovered X-rays. In it, the doctor Georg, played by Felix Kramer, experiments with the rays and believes he has found a kind of panacea in them. He refuses to acknowledge the obvious and deadly side effects of his treatments. The film fiction ties in with the historical fact that the dangers of X-rays were not initially known and only slowly entered the general consciousness. Long after the first cases of damage and deaths caused by the rays became known, the way they were handled remained, from today's perspective, astonishingly naive.