Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel

Si j'avais un bar, je l'appellerais The Blessing

Digital video, colour, with sound, 16'28'', loop, 2026

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Part dance film, part reflective essay on human relationships, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s film offers a cinematic experience set in Champel station. The story takes place in a bar called The Blessing, which brings together different temporalities symbolised by its many protagonists – the morning after a party, early morning or early evening. Aomi, Erwan and Neïla, the main characters in the plot, interact with each other like avatars from a video game. Indeed, their attitudes, behaviours and reflections reveal a kind of kinship with the world of gaming. Each of their actions has a cause-and-effect relationship with the next. The filmmakers further immerse their film in this virtual universe by dividing the projection surface – a long, fifteen-metre screen – into three parts. This multitude of viewpoints echoes the multitude of narrative voices that make up the story: the image, like the voice-over, speaks and reveals textual occurrences that add complexity to the film’s narrative structure. The inscriptions on the notepad placed on the bar function as stage directions: ‘he poured himself half a pint of beer and began to cry softly’ or reveal the characters’ thoughts using turquoise blue typography that overpowers the sound. These embedded text inserts also serve as a bridge between reality and fiction, as they seem to give substance to the filmmakers’ thoughts. The lyrics of the music, meanwhile, replay the characters’ actions or provide further contextual elements. In short, these are all ways of giving multiple voices to the film, which proudly displays its status as a cinematic work by writing its credits using peanuts.

Production: Fonds cantonal d'art contemporain, Geneva, for the MIRE programme