Winner of a Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2003 and director of musical documentaries, the Swiss Pierre-Yves Borgeaud questions what remains of our 68-year-old utopias in his new documentary film. On view now in French-speaking cinemas.
What remains of the utopias of May 68, of community life, squats, free love and dreams of change? Are eco-districts and cooperatives its legacy? These are the questions that director Pierre-Yves Borgeaud asks in “Our community utopias” by following three former protesters of the established order.
“The desire to make this film was born from the moment when I turn on my laptop in the morning and I see a list of fifty-two wifi stations, laughs the director, questioned by the RTS. I tell myself that “We could share a little better. We talk about a lot of things, but never about that: to share better, when it seems to me to be a final struggle.”
It will be necessary, one time or the other, to share better.
Perennial utopias
Asked about a possible return of utopias, Pierre-Yves Borgeaud replies on the contrary that some of them have always been there, such as those of living together and the sharing of resources, and that these are precisely the ones that interest him: “The idea was to start from a reflection on today; what can we look for in the dreams and utopias of the sixty-eighters who are now retiring, in what they experimented?”
>> See also: the interview with Pierre-Yves Borgeaud in the 12:45
If the director had trouble finding volunteers to talk about political utopias, which almost all failed, he found people ready to share their experiences and desires for a life in community. A subject that is all the more topical since since the 1970s, the surface area per inhabitant has increased sharply, raises Pierre-Yves Borgeaud: “We are around 40-50m2 per person in Switzerland, whereas to have a decent carbon footprint, this would have to be reduced by two. For ecological reasons, but also because there won’t be enough room for people. It will be necessary, one time or the other, to share better.
Three iconic characters
The documentary film “Our Community Utopias” follows three characters, with different backgrounds and aspirations: Pastor Pierre-André Pouly who wishes, with his wife, to live in a community once retired; Maya Schwan-Irniger, who wishes to rediscover the community life she once lived and who claims free love; and Hans Widmer, creator of several cooperatives in Zurich, including the prototype Kraftwerk 1.
Pierre-Yves Borgeaud explains that he expressly chose people of a certain age for their life experience, but also for the possibility of working with archives: “I wanted to show fifty years of life led by this idea of better sharing, in particular via housing. My characters all have fifty years of experience of community life. (…) The idea is to draw a continuity, because there has been no return in my opinion. Some things have remained .”
Asked about the difficulty of living together, the director recognizes the occurrence of tensions, the explosion of certain small communities and tempers: “I did not want to avoid it or make a documentary ‘care bears’ which says that it is necessarily great to live in community. (…) There are people who are anxious at the idea of having their toothbrush stolen and sharing the washing machine.
Pierre-Yves Borgeaud’s utopia could, in short, fit into the following two paradigms, in his own words: better share our wealth. And reinvent the neighborhood.
Interview by Pierre Philippe Cadert
Web adaptation: Charlotte Frossard
“Our community utopias” by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, co-production RTS. To see in the French-speaking rooms.