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Nostalgia for the Light
Nostalgia de la luz
2010 · Film · documentary · 93 min
Directed by Patricio Guzmán
In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.
4 positive1 mixedfrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
A very well made documentary about Atacama desert, ALMA and people still looking for their relatives in the desert from the Pinochet killings. It's ranked as one of the greatest documentaries ever made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Light
Patricio Guzman's 'Nostalgia for the Light' is a wonderful documentary 'about' Atacama. It cuts between the scientists using the telescopes and a collection of women who have been scouring the desert for fragments of the bodies of loved ones discarded during the pinochet regime. Both are using the space to probe history, just very different kinds and at very different scales. Very powerful and instructive exploration of the (dead) body, grief, and the necessity of 'witnessing'. Highly recommend it to everyone here!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Light
Great question!
Patricio Guzman: La batalla de chile, Nostalgia de la luz, El boton de nacar (i.e. everything I've seen so far)
Bob Connolly & Robin Anderson - First Contact, Joe Leahy's Neighbours, Black Harvest (Trilogy about a half-white, half-native New Guinean farmer)
Werner Herzog - (apart from those already mentioned) Lessons of Darkness, Les Blank's Burden of Dreams
Everything by Scott Noble - watch on metanoia-films.org/
Bus 174, Harlan Country USA, How To Start A Revolution, Silenced (2014), War on Whistleblowers, The Century of the Self
Man with a Movie Camera, Man on Wire, Dark Days, Kumaré, Dear Zachary, Children Full of Life (2003)
This one in from 2003 , but I watched it this year: Memories of a Murder http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/memories-of-murder/. It's about the first recorded serial killer from Korea. There is also 2 amazing documentary: Into Eternity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyKe-HxmFk and Nostalgia for the Light http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7f4MLL-Hk
No problem, I've only really become versed in these events recently myself after a trip to Chile. During the reign of Augusto Pinochet thousands of people were 'disappeared' - most were executed and buried in the desert, there's a decent bit of information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet#Suppression_of_opposition
Nowadays relatives (mostly female) of those missing still systematically search the deserts of northern Chile for the remains of their loved ones. For anyone interested there's a film - Nostalgia for the Light (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1556190/) which examines the search of the families alongside the rather different 'searching' of the astronomers working in the same deserts. Personally I wasn't crazy on some aspects of the film, but it's a good insight into the ongoing work that victim's families are doing in the Atacama desert around the city of Calama.