In the Chilean desert, filmmaker Patricio Guzmán eyes nation's horrors and hopes

[Judi Lynn]

In the Chilean desert, filmmaker Patricio Guzmán eyes nation's horrors and hopes
BY Lewis Beale
Wednesday, March 9th 2011, 4:00 AM

Patricio Guzmán was studying photos of Chile's Atacama Desert - an area so dry it cannot support any kind of life - when he began to realize that there were "a lot of things" happening in that place.

"The desert is a space without time," he says. "It's composed of wind and salt. It's like a piece of Mars."

If so, it's a piece of Mars with a unique past and present. And Guzmán, an internationally respected documentary filmmaker known mainly for movies about the downfall of President Salvador Allende ("The Battle of Chile") and the brutalities of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship ("The Pinochet Case"), explores it in his latest work, "Nostalgia for the Light," opening here March 18.

Guzmán's film is, essentially, about a search for the past, but told from three different perspectives:

• The anthropological, because the Atacama in northern Chile has perfectly preserved the mummies of pre-Columbian Indians.
  
• The political, because the desert was a burial ground for hundreds of people murdered by the Pinochet regime.
  
• And the astronomical, because, due to its perfectly clear skies, the desert is home to some of Earth's largest telescopes.

More:
http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/2011/03/09/2011-03-09_light_to_the_truth.html