We received feedback from 17 members and guests following the showing of “Nostalgia for the Light” on 7th May.
Here’s how you rated the film:
- ‘Excellent’: 5 votes
- ‘Very Good’: 7 votes
- ‘Good’: 2 votes
- ‘Satisfactory’: 3 votes
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
If you didn’t leave comments on the night or, having had time to reflect, you wish to say more about the film(s), we would welcome any further comments here.
I thought the film was excellent – one of the best this season.
the cinematography was exquisitely beautiful, the juxtaposition of the beauty, wonder, origins of the stars and universes unfolding through the astronomy while the 10’s of 1000’s of disappeared and the history of Pinochet’s massacre, the Obstinate and lost memories of those who survived and came after lays hidden.
I didn’t find the film “too long” or “too slow” indeed it was it was always compelling beautiful and harrowing and the pain of the women searching and the tragedy and crime of what the Chilean people endured so moving.
i likee the immense details of the filming, the landscapes, the geology, the Hubble photos and the graininess of planets, dust, stars turning into a human skull of the one of the victims.
in some ways the cinematography could be called indulgent – the beautiful shots of dust motes, stars, galaxies and the poetry of the principal interviewee as he describes the essence of what astronomy is but overall deeply reflective, thought provoking and beautiful and sad all in one.
thank you for the copious and excellent notes giving more information on the filming and Guzman. I’d like to see more of Guzman’s documentaries on chile in the film club.
Although both ‘halves’ of the documentary (the Astronomy, on the one hand, and the plight of the women searching for the Disappeared on the other) were fascinating, I’m not sure that Guzmán was entirely successful in marrying the two halves together. Some of the references to both looking back into the past were very tenuous.
One of the feedback comments said that they hadn’t learnt anything new. Certainly, the images of the universe, whilst extremely pretty, were just presented with no information about what we were looking at (i.e. how many light years away they were, etc.). However, the stories from the women (how they had found just heads and feet, that had dropped from the mechanical diggers when the graves had been excavated) and the testimony of Valentina, whose parents were among the Disappeared, working at the observatory, I believe did add to our understanding. For me, one of the most powerful images was the warehouse full of neat cardboard boxes, containing the remains of bodies recovered from the desert, as yet unidentified, and the fact that – to this day – no one has a clear idea of how many victims of Pinochet’s campaign there were.
It is interesting to compare the attitude of modern Chileans, not wanting to dwell on the past, with recent revelations about our own attitudes to the Troubles in Northern Ireland (the amnesties given to Republicans and the recent arrest of Gerry Adams vs. the inquest into the British Army’s actions during Bloody Sunday). In both Northern Ireland and Chile people come into daily contact with those they know were responsible for terrorism but whom the Government have no interest in pursuing.