Nostalgia for the Light
(Nostalgia de la luz)

Patricio Guzmán visits the Chilean Atacama desert, where both astronomers and geologists are at work on the trail of an ancient past that can be read in the stars or buried in the ground. He is thus questioning the paradox of a near past, including that of the dictatorship, that is to say the paradox of a memory which can be difficult to establish and maintain. The bones of the missing people come from the calcium in the stars, but victims cannot be identified although they were still alive only yesterday. In his late work, of which Nostalgia for the Light is part, Guzmán – who was always concerned by Chili’s political history – weaves poetic relations, drawing on scientific exploration to enlighten the kinship between cinema and memory. Florence Maillard