Elizabeth Landesberg

Excerpt from a short movie made in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with and about the children and teens who are responsible for the work that goes into caring for and remembering the dead in the city’s municipal cemetery. From cleaning niches and headstones, to changing the water in flower vases, to singing and praying for the dead, the labor of these young people helps to maintain some sort of balance between life and death. My focus was on all the things that are created and generated around the dead—songs, stories, flowers, relationships, and the livelihoods of a group of young people whose families depend on the extra income. In the Cementerio General, death is not punctuation, but the very substance and sustenance of the place, and children as young as seven years old act as the mediators between realms as they try to make a living.

director; camera and sound in collaboration with subjects; editor