FILM 10. Nostalgia for the Light, dir. Patricio Guzmán, 2011. (CANVAS)

https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1611758/assignments/7763185

Nostalgia de la luz / Nostalgia for the Light (2010)

Written and directed by Patricio Guzmán (b. 1941)

Coproduction of France, Germany, Chile, Spain and the US

Synopsis:

“Guzman travels 10,000 feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert. There astronomers from all over the world gather atop the mountains to observe the stars and the sky is so translucent, allowing them to see right to the boundaries of the universe. The Atacama is also the place where the harsh heat of the sun keeps human remains intact: those of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th century explorers and miners; and the remains of political prisoners, "disappeared" by the Chilean army after the military coup of September, 1973. So while astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared whose bodies were dumped here, search, even after twenty-five years, for the remains of their loved ones, to reclaim their families' histories.” 

Questions:

Questions:

1. How does Guzmán as the first-person narrator distinguish this from his previous films?

2. How does Guzmán interweave autobiographical, philosophical reflection, science and political history in this film? Does this remind you of other documentary films that you have seen?

3. In what sense was Chile “a haven of peace isolated from the world” during Patricio Guzmán’s childhood in the 1940s and 1950s? According to Guzmán, what disrupted this haven of peace?

4. What comparisons does Guzmán draw between the desert and the heavens?

5. What does the astronomer Gaspar Galán mean when he says that the present doesn’t exist?

6.  According to Lautaro Núñez, the archaeologist, why doesn’t Chile examine its past, for instance the 19^th century and the history of the colonization of indigenous Chileans? What parallels can we draw to the history of the coup and dictatorship?

7. What do you think the image of the empty coats and rows of spoons clanging in the wind represents?

8. Why does Luis, the former political prisoner at Chacabuco Concentration Camp, mean when he says that he and the other prisoners felt liberated by making their own telescope and studying the stars?

9. Why does Guzmán call Miguel, the artist, “the architect of memory”? How did he memorize the floorplans of the five complexes where he was held, in order to draw them later?

10. What are some of the connections that the film draws between astronomy, archaeology and the search by the relatives of the disappeared?

11. Comment on the meaning of the Mothers’ banner, “It was not a war, it was a massacre.”

12.  Comment on the wall of photographs of the disappeared that the camera lingers on. How has it changed over the years?

13.  Comment on Guzmán’s statement: “Those of us who have a memory are able to live in the fragile present moment. Those who have no memory can’t live anywhere.”

14. Explain the title of the film.