For his new film master director Patricio Guzmán, famed for his politicaI documentaries (THE BATTLE OF CHlLE, THE PlNOCHET CASE), travels 10,000 feet above sea IeveI to the driest pIace on earth, the Atacama Desert, where atop the mountains astronomers from aIl over the world gather to observe the stars. The sky is so transIucent that it aIlows them to see right to the boundaries of the universe. The Atacama is also a place where the harsh heat of the sun keeps human remains intact: those of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th century expIorers and miners; and the remains of poIitical 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 Ioved ones, to reclaim their families' histories. Melding the celestiaI quest of the astronomers and the earthIy one of the women, NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT is a gorgeous, moving, and deeply personaI odyssey. |