Nostalgia for the Light

Combining politics and science in a stirring visual essay, filmmaker Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile) visits the high-altitude Atacama Desert in Chile, which serves as a springboard for philosophical ruminations. Featuring one of the driest climates in the world (the site of archaeological digs for pre-Columbian mummies and other bodies preserved through desiccation), the region offers optimum conditions for the use of deep-space telescopes, while also inspiring generations of amateur stargazers. But the area also has a darker history, both as a harsh 19th-century mining camp where laborers died in virtual slavery and as a brutal 20th-century prison compound and interrogation center for the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, whose junta tortured, executed, and later exhumed and reburied thousands of dissidents. Guzmán segues lyrically between these different layers of time and memory, from the Big Bang to the human lifespan, as scientists and survivors of the regime pursue their parallel quests for answers about the mysteries of space or the remains of slain and vanished loved ones. DVD extras include five shorts by Guzmán on astronomy, the cosmos, and the history of Chile. A recent winner of the Best Feature award from the prestigious International Documentary Association, this is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)