Elisa Larvego
Switzerland | 2012 | 67 min
World premiere
Language : English
Subtitle : French
The archaeology of a hippie commune in Colorado, USA: the few remaining members lead a tour through the ruins of the abandoned houses and tell stories of the intensive life once lived in this village. The right touch of irony produces an honest and reflective consideration of the dreams a generation once pursued.
"Libre", which means "free", is the name of a commune founded during the 1960s in Colorado’s Huerfano Valley by a group of young hippies. Only a few of the commune’s residents are still there, and the children who grew up in this breathtakingly beautiful wilderness are pursuing their lives elsewhere. The filmmaker Elisa Larvego takes an excursion through time in the company of three likeable, gray-haired hippies. Memories are awakened as they comb through the ruins of the abandoned houses, a conspicuous number of which were built in a round form. Self-critical but with an enduring respect for their ideals, the three tell stories from their earlier communal life with all its inconsistencies. They planted corn together, naked, but afterward no one looked after the fields. And their marijuana business catapulted them back into dealing with the money they had rejected. In spite of all this, even today they share the land. And they had so much sex that the women do not want to talk about it anymore. Huerfano Valley is the moving archaeology of a vision of life that never ceases to ask the question of what is required to live in community.
Jenny Billeter
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