Mene Tekel

Just like becoming an astronaut, a racing driver or a policeman, it has long been the ultimate boy‘s dream to choose the profession of firefighter. Today, the Amsterdam fire brigade gives preferential treatment to women and immigrants, and thousands of applications by ‘white’ males are gathering dust in a drawer. In MENE TEKEL Pieter Fleury (1955) observes the effects of this so-called positive action. Explanatory note: Fleury derived the title of the film from the Bible story about the downfall of Babylon. A phantom hand is said to have written the words ‘mene, mene, tekel, upharshîn’ (counted, counted, weighed, divided) on the walls of King Besazar‘s palace. In the current vernacular mene tekel has become an expression, meaning as much as ‘weighed and found wanting’. Every application entails this risk, but which standards are used by the Amsterdam fire brigade? Previously, Fleury directed more than thirty episodes for VPRO‘s (Dutch broadcaster) international current affairs programme Diogenes.