Noon in the Cemetery
Midi dans le cimetière
The story
A luncheon on the grass among the tombs. While the living are living, the voices of the dead are floating in the air. When lunch-time comes, the “Cimetière des Rois” (“Cemetery of Kings”), downtown Geneva, fills up with residents, workers, employees, students of the neighborhood. People come alone, in pairs, with friends or colleagues, to have a snack on the grass or to take a break on a bench. The living and the dead share a same space-time. Mixing contemporary Super 8 footage of people on the cemetery and sound archives of the personalities bored there, MIDI DANS LE CIMETIERE (NOON IN THE CEMETERY) is a short essay film, a kind of experimental documentary. If it was a painting, it could be a Vanitas, “a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death.”