In Patricio Guzman’s Nostalgia for the Light, he likens the struggles of women who have lost a member of their family due to Augusto Pinochet’s regime, and astronomers/geologists/scientists etc. researching the past to being “never resolved”, and using the school of thought that the present isn’t truly real, and we are all living in the past, more or less, to strengthen the argument.
With the former, as we see in the interview with Violeta Berríos, people search day after day for years on end, only to be unsuccessful in finding their loved ones’ bodies (whether they are looking for just a part or the whole thing). These people are living in the past, unable to look forward past Pinochet’s old regime and live life, they instead decide to spend their time searching for a part of the past that they never got full closure on. The documentary says, though, that we are “morally obliged to remember our dead”, so their actions can’t be entirely chastised, as they know no other way to mourn and respect their fallen family members than by searching until the end of their own lives for them. Likening the women to the astronomers, memory, and the past, has a “gravitational force”. Astronomers look to the sky for answers, and often use past astronomical research and common knowledge to help find these answers. The only difference, as Gaspar Galaz points out, between these women searching for their loved ones, and astronomers looking to the sky, is “astronomers can sleep peacefully, mothers cannot”.
Both astronomers and mothers of the deceased will continue to look to the sky and ground, respectively, for answers until their two needs are met, but, the thing is, neither’s needs will actually be met until (possibly) millions of years from now. Both parties are dealing with the fact of not being able to live in the truest, absolute present, because it apparently doesn’t exist. No one will ever be able to know all of the information on/about the sky/galaxy because it is infinite. (Some) of the mothers will never be able to get full closure because they will die before the bones of their loved ones become found.
Nostalgia For the Light (2010) juxtaposes the majestic beauty of space with the future with the traumatic horrors of the past, as if suggesting when someone looks up at the stars for a comforting distraction; they are neglecting to look at themselves and their past. Like Night and Fog (1955) that converges the past and the present, the film juxtaposes between black–and–white and color footage of a major concentration camp. Stargazing is described as a universal interest in the film and is used to link the past and present, but also exist as a placeholder for the future. When you consider the film as also a combination of digital and film photography, that too juxtaposes between the past and present as film is today considered “dead” whereas digital photography currently exists as our present and future means at creating images. Nostalgia For The Light relates to the Riccarelli’s “Battle of Chile” article in that as a documentary it attempts to create “characters” rather than interview subjects which means following the “show” versus “tell” mantra by having the subjects do something on –screen as opposed to just telling you about it. Often this is illustrated in the Calama digging scenes. It is the “showing” aspect that provides additional context to a scene and makes the characters become more memorable. It seems Nostalgia For The Light’s construction suggests that the filmmakers did not have a clear structure in mind or that whatever they had planned changed during the making of it. It is unclear to me if the documentary has a clear “message” or thesis it is trying to get across. It seems to be a hybrid between traditional documentary and an “essay film” in that it combines traditional documentary aesthetics (sit–down interviews, voice over narration) with a sense of unpredictability. Unlike Chris Marker’s Grin Without A Cat which is an essay film solely reflecting a past historical situation, May ’68, that was recorded on film [a primary source], this film combines both primary sources [archive footage] and secondary sources [present day footage/interviews], but by showing people literally “digging” for historical remains or describing neglected past histories, it shows that history and our reflections of it are inconclusive, and that is disconcerting for traditional documentary viewers who expect an incontestable conclusion that backs up historical evidence for if history is still being unearthed, then a documentary can only reflect the contemporary views of a particular subject.
In “Nostalgia for the Light” and “The Battle of Chile,” director Patricio Guzman looks at the events of the late 60s and 70s in Chile through two different lenses. In “The Battle of Chile,” he is filming the events as they occur, playing a direct role in history as it unfolds, and in “Nostalgia for the Light,” he is looking back at the events decades later, philosophizing them within the context of the history of the universe. He makes an interesting comparison between a specific nation’s recent history and the “larger” history that archeologists and astronomers seek for in the desert, the sky and stars. Cecilia Ricciarelli describes, “For Guzman, documentary cinema form part of the critical and analytical conscience of a society…it is a true calling that demands complete dedication and a clear ethical position” (3). For Guzman it seems that the ethical way to respond to the military coup and Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship is to continue investigating the past. Though he made a groundbreaking account of the actual events in “The Battle for Chile,” Guzman continues in 2010 to look back at them and analyze them from today’s perspective. In this way, he believes that the documentary still has a role to play in understanding this chapter in Chile’s history. It is not only important to understand the events as they happened, but how they affect Chile today and their reverberations in modern society. Remembering for the sake of remembering could be done by rewatching Guzman’s three part film, but “Nostalgia for the Light” is a modern companion piece that shows audiences that the effects of the dictatorship are still around and there is still a lot that has yet to be uncovered. Like the women searching the desert for loved ones, the archeologists, astronomers, and historians, Guzman shows how documentarians are also involved in the odyssey to discover, analyze, and answer questions about the past. Though their questions may only lead to more questions, the quest for knowledge and understanding of the past is essential to understanding one’s own place in time, and as large as the questions of the universe may seem, Guzman shows even Chile’s recent history is a mystery and unknowable in comparable ways.
I am going to begin this blog post with a quote from the essay “Chile: Obstinate Memory,” which reads “ Although in the end the documentary film always implies the discourse of an individual before reality, it was considered essential that the author have a neutral position, never too evident. Guzman speaks of this link as one of the great limitations of documentary film in those years. With time, the documentary has finally liberated itself from this theoretical-or ideological- premise, leaving more space for personal interpretation of reality.” Yes, this is a bit of a long quote, but it presents us with a good way of looking at the documentary genre. In the early days of the documentary, it was considered to be a genre with historian capabilities, able to capture the objective truth of certain situations. But what happens when the objective situation is systematically censored and history purposely forgotten? You get a documentary like Nostalgia For The Light. The title of the documentary gives us a clue as to what the purpose of the style of the film is. The film intertwines the philosophies and practices of astronomy and archaeology, with the political history of Chile, or lack there of. The film gets the viewer into position to compare this information. Much like an astronomer looks at a star to study the past, a person studying the history of a country would look at past people, through photographs, journals, and other documents. But in Chile, the people have disappeared as have most of the clues; their “star” was swallowed by the void. Thus, the title. A remembrance of what happened to the light, to the people. The film is an attempt to qualify its title. Chile, although brilliant with the stars overhead, is ironically, a land of darkness. And that is Chile’s present, a time with no past. A black hole at the beginning of a story.
p.s- sorry about all the metaphors. The film was asking for it.
I find myself continually returning to the debate between revolutionary cinema and accessible mainstream cinema in regards to getting a message across to audiences in revolutionary times. While I agree with what was said in class on Tuesday about how the non-traditional films are able to communicate to us a much more complex viewpoint with the use of allegory and radical form, I feel as though we might be forgetting that we aren’t necessarily the intended audience for all of the films that we have watched this semester. As Jess pointed out during the presentation, many of the films made in response to the political problems of “Latin America” were made specifically for viewers in the countries in which they were made, not for us. Despite the fact that radical formal departure from more accessible types of cinema can potentially convey more meaning if the viewer is equipped with the education to deconstruct such films, the audiences of countries like Chile and Brazil were widely illiterate and didn’t have access to the type of education that would allow them to glean the political content out of radical films.
It was likely more effective for Patricio Guzmán to show a documentary that explicitly mentions the millions of US dollars that went towards destabilizing the Popular Unity government than to shoot an unconventional narrative film that alludes to collusion between the United States government and the Chilean military. Although the wider Chilean population was undoubtedly aware of the strikes and food shortages, they might not have been aware of the different political forces that were at the root of their problems and would benefit from a straightforward documentary that would inform them. Even with a broad knowledge of the events that occurred before the establishment of the Pinochet regime, footage of small incidents such as the killing of the cameraman during the street battles in the first coup attempt has the potential to make a more personal connection to the Chilean viewer and rile them up against the regime.
Differing from this is Guzmán’s “Nostalgia for the Light”, a documentary that is clearly intended for a wider, international audience. Because the film is meant to reach audiences both in and out of Chile, it moves away from the more blunt references to the events during the Pinochet years and engages with more universal ideas to relate what people in Chile went through to a wider audience. In his combined focus on astronomy, archeology, and the survivors’ quest to find closure with their missing loved ones, Guzmán makes the Chilean struggle more accessible in combination with scientific ideas that are more familiar to Western audiences. Techniques such as the use of computer imaging to superimpose floating dust particles onto representatives of different groups signal to the viewer that all of these people are engaged in essentially the same activity, that of searching the past for either scientific or emotional meaning, and makes each of their struggles that much more relatable.
When I began watching “Nostalgia de la Luz” by Patricio Guzman, I had to double check to make sure I was watching the right documentary. In comparison to “Battle of Chile,” “El Grito,” and “Hour of the Furnaces,” the beginning is gentle, the panoramic views of land, earth, and space are calm and beautiful. The tired voice of the narrator, all too well mirrors the process of the Latin American struggle. It has been a long journey of revolt and repression just like the journey of the universe has been long and full of unknown facts and mysterious, unanswerable questions. The tonality and pace that comes forth from the parallel narration of science and social examinations is, as it title warns, a nostalgic and rather paced depiction. The long shot of a slow-moving train, the panoramic vistas, and even the mothers speaking of horrible stories are framed in the peacefulness and protectiveness of the vast land. It is as if the revolutionary is tired. Tired of looking down. Tired of looking up. Tired of remembering. Tired of forgetting. It is as if Guzman put all the violence in “Battle of Chile,” and he has none left to visually fill “Nostalgia de la Luz.” In the DVD booklet, Cecilia Ricciarelli observes that, “in all his films Guzman vindicates the importance of personal reconstruction and interpretation implicit in the auteur documentary film,” (8) this is perhaps most obvious during the long narration of Guzman’s reflections. His voice is an anchor to remember that behind the camera, there is a person. It is a reminder that this is not a self-moving camera, that “filming reality is as compelling as living it,” (2). Just like fighting the cause, recording the cause has a price. Sometimes it comes at the cost of personal life, as in Leonardo Henrichsen and Raymundo Gleyzer. To watch this documentaries, is to remember that the harsh realities being depicted are being lived by someone who is not protected behind the screen.
PS: This was in part inspired by the discussion during yesterday's presentation. The point that documentaries seem to be more of a national cinema, specific to its people was a well taken one that left me thinking. For the longest time, I'd considered documentaries the tools to learn about other nations and their struggles, but it seems true that in the aesthetics of revolutionary film making, the price of reaching support of the people, comes at alienating those not in the struggle. And so, the revolution continues and the struggle never dies.
As was discussed during the group presentation in class on Tuesday, there is a complex contrast between documentary film and narrative/fiction film. In watching Nostalgia for the Light and The Battle of Chile, I was also struck by this question, especially because both films are directed by Patricio Guzmán. Reading the press kit for The Battle of Chile again underlined the importance of this relationship.
It is paramount to note that the press kit (distributed by Icarus Films) declares Nostalgia for the Light to be “perhaps the most personal film of Guzmán’s career,” while Guzmán more directly participated in and was more directly affected by the events of The Battle of Chile (p. 10). Is Nostalgia for the Light “full of poetry [and] philosophical and personal reflections” because it is relatively a more narrative film (in the sense that it was shot with a clearer plan and at least an idea of where the “story” would end), or because it was created when the director was older and possibly more inclined to self-reflection (10)? Based on the evidence within the films themselves – the more graceful cinematography of the 2010 film, the use of visual and thematic/narrative metaphor, the budget – it seems to be a combination of both…although I do not believe a strict documenting of events allows for such a degree of metaphoric imagery, just because events are occurring as they are being filmed and a greater impact cannot necessarily be appreciated at that point. This is part of a statement later on in that press kit that Guzmán and his collaborators had to “[s]helv[e] their fiction projects until the time when the country might be under more secure political control,” implying that greater artistic realization can be prohibited by political and financial restrictions (14). The documentary film of and in 1968 and the less-strictly-documentary film put out over 40 years after the fact seem to be of entirely different genres – artistically, visually, and narratively, and in terms of the director’s cinematic sensibilities – even though the later film considers, at its core, the same events of The Battle of Chile.
In the text that comes with the DVD Battle of Chile, Guzman’s the film The Battle of Chile is analyzed. In describing the functions of Guzman’s film it is stated, “United with a reflection of the past and memory, his cinema has acquired even more force and maturity”. Argues that The Battle of Chile is using past and memory of Mexico’s history to further engage the viewers and to instigate intellectual thought processes. He goes on to argue that this film maker was one of the first to use subjectivity as a tool in order to educate viewers in documentaries. This idea of portraying the oppression that Mexico was subjected to at the time serves an important role in engaging Mexican viewers in a way that would allow them to put pressure on the issues that were happening at the time, and even issues that are happening contemporarily. In this sense this documentary functions more as a political tool rather than a source of entertainment, and reaches its goals of engagement and maturity. These factors of this documentary also further testify to the notion that Guzman’s film was indeed revolutionary for its time, and currently still effective.
With being part of this week’s presentation, I felt I would have an easier time attempting to interpret the bare bones of the Latin American struggle and what it truly meant to the people. However, as we discussed in our presentation, it seems there is a definite difference in the levels of efficiency a film has in conveying its message. The Battle of Chile, and Nostalgia For the Light are separated by nearly 35 years, but remain both as documents, a straightforward informational film of struggles, revolutions, and aftermaths. However, although I should have expected the stark differences I was completely caught off guard when watching Nostalgia after Battle of Chile, As Jess mentioned in her post, I felt I had to double check that I was watching the right documentary, directed by the right Patricio Guzmán! It is without doubt that the struggle continues, as that was a point we made frequently in our presentation, but it is how the struggle continues that is most interesting. We had information from three main countries as to how the struggle continues, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile; but I found myself questioning how it truly continues. Along with censorship is the fact that it is difficult to reach a reliable and truthful news source to find the truth as to what is happening in the present day. With a film as recent, that shows the aftermath of atrocities done years ago, there is a sigh of relief that comes over in knowing that this must be as close to the truth as possible. Even if Nostalgia For the Light isn’t fit to show students carry Maoist propaganda, or with communist flags draped around their shoulders, it shows that revolution has happened, and the outcome is that it is still happening. Nothing has been settled, and perhaps things never will; Nostalgia with peaceful long shots and sorrow filled aftermaths is, in my opinion, the most clear present day representation of what ’68 meant to Latin America. We can have current day protests, but the disappearances and claustrophobic oppression these ‘Latin American’ countries have is one thing they share in common as 68 happened, and perhaps will continue in line of the people against the government.
Both Patricio Guzmán films, Nostalgia for the Light and both parts of Battle of Chile are documentaries interested in what will happen in the future and trying to be a part of that process. However, these two films completely different films, both in context and generations. The comparison are slim, but through the lens of history, are interested in how they can improve the lives around them
The Battle of Chile a like many of films we have seen in the classroom, an examination of how the government is taking advantages for it people, but for the first part of the series, director Patricio Guzmán more interested in what the people think than the violence around them. He continually asks people on the street “What do you think about the election?” “How are you going to vote?” These questions are more interested about the prospect of the future than what is actually around them. We clearly see as the film go along how it is going to end. In Patricio Guzman’s the Battle of Chile, “the struggle, the drama, and the enthusiasm of the historic moment were imprinted with incredible intensity on that filmed material thanks to a notable maturity in the narrative approach” (5). As Guzmán is hoping for the best while asking these questions, the inevitable conclusion appears to overtake the film.
What is interesting about Nostalgia is that it doesn’t the viewer does not see the connection at first to 68? How does space have to do with this? But as Guzmán connects the plot to the stories how Chilean women looking for their families after fierce dictatorship rule. Nostalgia works as a connection to 68 because it not only has look upon it past but it also a virtual example of what the Battle of Chile accomplished.
Early on in the documentary Nostalgia for the Light an interview is held with a scientist who says "the present doesn't exist.". Although he was not talking about the revolution and it's after math when he said it I find it hard not to put it into the context of revolution and oppression in Latin America. Although the problems of 68 are in the past it's easy to see that they still exist, the revolution and the aftermath of said revolutions echo forward to the modern day. Because of this Chile is still in part anchored to 1968. The present does not exist.
The fact that Guzman was able to make a documentary that although is set in the modern day is able to draw on the movements of 68 some 35 years later speaks to the relevance of 1968 in Chile.
In "Nostalgia for the Light", Patricio Guzman effectively uses astronomy and archaeology in the present day as a way of questioning how people remember the past and how they are currently being affected by it. Viewing Guzman's earlier film, "The Battle for Chile Part 1 & 2," seemed to be a lot to take in at first, but after seeing "Nostalgia for the Light," I think that the two films he has created complement each other very well, almost in a similar fashion to "Marianne and Juliane" and "The State I Am In" where there is a gap between the generations and events within the films where something changes. The things that were true in the past are not so clear anymore and people are still searching for the best answers.
"The Battle for Chile" effectively set us up with the knowledge of the events that occurred in Chile's revolution through dealing with those events very close to the time they actually happened. 35 years later, Guzman returns with "Nostalgia for the Light" to complement his earlier ventures and bring those events full circle. How are they remembered today in Chile? What has the lasting effect been? Why are there questions that still haven't been answered? As the film continued to unfold, I could not help but to think of much of my research on Christian Petzold in New German Cinema and, more specifically, "The State I Am In." Just like in Germany, the events of the past still continue to be relevent, especially for younger generations who are forced to deal with something they may not have been around for. The archaeolgist in "Nostalgia for the Light" reminds the audience that "We cannot forget!". He also ecplains that "The astronomers created an enormous telescope to bring two seemingly incompatible things closer: the origins of everything and the past of everything we are today." The symbolism of astronomy and telescopes are very fitting to the idea that the past is always present. It is always affecting things in some way, even though those events are already over. The question is, how are they effecting the present?
Battle of Chile explored a topic in a way that the other films that we have watched this semester have not. While all documentaries have biases due to the medium and the inability to capture every side of every event, Battle of Chile gives an impression of being particularly removed from a point of view. This is accomplished by the extended periods of time in which there is no narration. The people in the film speak for themselves and the events speak for themselves.
This technique was interesting to me because of the focus that it put on the narrator. One is not subjected to a lecture, but situations and images are explained and framed for the audience. This also allows for the audience to watch the events in a more understanding manner if they were not already familiar with the topics. The introductions and explanations make me question who the target audience of the film was.
If the target audience was solely those who were involved in the revolution, on one side or the other, it seems to me as though there may not even be a need for narration. The signs, chants, and protests would all be at least semi-familiar to those involved. If it is not made for those who were directly involved, perhaps there was a large portion of the population who were ignorant to the situation. These people would have probably been poor and living in a rural environment, which raises the question of how the documentary would reach them anyway. The final explanations are that it could have been made with the intent of educating the youth or educating the world on the events that happened in Chile. Even though the United States played a large roll in the events, most people in the United States almost certainly have no idea that the events had ever occurred.
I am going to go out on a limb and fight that documentary based film like "The Battle for Chile" are actually the clearest forms of revolutionary film. They are harder to watch, but the revolution is not a party. They and the film itself is part of the revolution by being there at the scene when it is happening. In reflection on Marshall McLuhan's "hot" and "cool" media, documentaries like "The Battle of Chile" are always going to fall in the "cool" section when being compared to easy to watch hollywood film. The sequence is not clear to someone who does not have knowledge about Chile's political processes of the time. It takes more participation and outside learning by the viewer to understand context and what is really going on.
However, in terms of documenting actual time and place and all of its factors, and then folding this into a bigger picture is impossible. But this should not be a slight on documentaries. I create my own narrative after watching "The Battle of Chile." I remember blooper-filled, excited, live action at the beginning, which then gives way to bureaucratic stalemate from the opposing sides after Allende keeps his term. And then ends in live action violence, this is a different, scarier kind of excitement than that at the beginning of the film. This type of narrative, although broad, and missing key players (like the CIA), is not the worst description of the times in Chile, and is more effective as a historical reference than a film that tries to dramatize the coup. The details come from the personal opinions shared by those being interviewed, and were picked to reflect the varying feelings of Chile as a whole. None of those details
I find “Nostalgia by the Light” one of the most satisfying, and moving documentary that I have seen. At first I was shocked at the stark contrast in production regarding the two viewing films this week by Patricio Guzman. Guzman’s style in itself was kind of dramatic, without the reenactments. However I find a common theme within both of how they use different aesthetics and reflect on the time and space that we measure our lives by. The gap in timing apart from the two films releases gives two different personas of the director. Battle of Chile is a documentary that connects the past with the present, preserving it in time. This film uses the means of just a camera to capture the sights and sounds, as well as human interaction that inevitably would have been lost to time. I believe that Nostalgia by the Light is a reflection on history and its impact on the present. A good scene that was included but didn’t necessarily need to be is the scene about light taking 7 minutes to reach earth, thus everything we see is in the past. My own personal appeal when it comes to filmmaking is documentary style rather that narrative. I appreciate the rawness that came with both of Guzman’s films. I find it more appealing to connect to the themes of the documentaries because they seem more in the realm of realistic and not idealized. Narratives seem to me as scripted and bias when trying to conclude facts. Guzman’s documentaries elude this problem by leaving out scripted dramatization.
Of course the day after I argue how narrative films speak better to an international audience than documentaries do I watch Nostalgia of the Light and find myself completely in love with the film. However, I think that some of what I said still stands true. Films that use the strengths of cinema (cinematography, editing, sound, etc) to communicate their intention are able to transcend language barriers (even if those films are documentaries). I stand by this because I think that Nostalgia of the Light very effectively uses the mechanics of cinema to enrich its message. Not only that, but both the imagery and the philosophy of the film touch some really interesting existential ideas on top of its politics. I am a total sucker when it comes to space imagery and exploration. I also am deeply fascinated by the fallibility of human perception (everything we observe is technically in the past and the further away we get from a thing, the further in the past we observe that thing). The film has an acute awareness of the irony of Chile's uniquely well suited fixture as a place to observe the history of the universe, while being a place that is willingly ignorant of its recent history. The film's score is also effectively used to highlight the juxtaposition between the majesty of space and the ugliness of the human cruelty by laying the same music over a beautiful nebula as a forgotten, mummified Chilean worker. These are things that speak to me (a foreigner to the language, culture, and history of Chile) much deeper than a documentary like the Battle of Chile. Not that I am saying Battle of Chile is a lesser film for not exercising the same cinematic dexterity as Nostalgia for the Light, because The Battle of Chile certainly has advantage's over Nostalgia for the Light (mainly how candidly it captured the history unfolding in front of it, and the endless bravery it must have taken to film it). I am not sure what to do with that information however. Is it selfish to want for such films to cater to my sensibilities as a foreigner on top of the sensibilities of its own nationality? I would be inclined to say yes. I think that's why it is ultimately up to the filmmaker to decide who they are trying to speak to when making their film.
Nostalgia for the Light:
ReplyDeleteIn Patricio Guzman’s Nostalgia for the Light, he likens the struggles of women who have lost a member of their family due to Augusto Pinochet’s regime, and astronomers/geologists/scientists etc. researching the past to being “never resolved”, and using the school of thought that the present isn’t truly real, and we are all living in the past, more or less, to strengthen the argument.
With the former, as we see in the interview with Violeta Berríos, people search day after day for years on end, only to be unsuccessful in finding their loved ones’ bodies (whether they are looking for just a part or the whole thing). These people are living in the past, unable to look forward past Pinochet’s old regime and live life, they instead decide to spend their time searching for a part of the past that they never got full closure on. The documentary says, though, that we are “morally obliged to remember our dead”, so their actions can’t be entirely chastised, as they know no other way to mourn and respect their fallen family members than by searching until the end of their own lives for them. Likening the women to the astronomers, memory, and the past, has a “gravitational force”. Astronomers look to the sky for answers, and often use past astronomical research and common knowledge to help find these answers. The only difference, as Gaspar Galaz points out, between these women searching for their loved ones, and astronomers looking to the sky, is “astronomers can sleep peacefully, mothers cannot”.
Both astronomers and mothers of the deceased will continue to look to the sky and ground, respectively, for answers until their two needs are met, but, the thing is, neither’s needs will actually be met until (possibly) millions of years from now. Both parties are dealing with the fact of not being able to live in the truest, absolute present, because it apparently doesn’t exist. No one will ever be able to know all of the information on/about the sky/galaxy because it is infinite. (Some) of the mothers will never be able to get full closure because they will die before the bones of their loved ones become found.
Nostalgia For the Light (2010) juxtaposes the majestic beauty of space with the future with the traumatic horrors of the past, as if suggesting when someone looks up at the stars for a comforting distraction; they are neglecting to look at themselves and their past. Like Night and Fog (1955) that converges the past and the present, the film juxtaposes between black–and–white and color footage of a major concentration camp. Stargazing is described as a universal interest in the film and is used to link the past and present, but also exist as a placeholder for the future. When you consider the film as also a combination of digital and film photography, that too juxtaposes between the past and present as film is today considered “dead” whereas digital photography currently exists as our present and future means at creating images.
ReplyDeleteNostalgia For The Light relates to the Riccarelli’s “Battle of Chile” article in that as a documentary it attempts to create “characters” rather than interview subjects which means following the “show” versus “tell” mantra by having the subjects do something on –screen as opposed to just telling you about it. Often this is illustrated in the Calama digging scenes. It is the “showing” aspect that provides additional context to a scene and makes the characters become more memorable. It seems Nostalgia For The Light’s construction suggests that the filmmakers did not have a clear structure in mind or that whatever they had planned changed during the making of it. It is unclear to me if the documentary has a clear “message” or thesis it is trying to get across. It seems to be a hybrid between traditional documentary and an “essay film” in that it combines traditional documentary aesthetics (sit–down interviews, voice over narration) with a sense of unpredictability. Unlike Chris Marker’s Grin Without A Cat which is an essay film solely reflecting a past historical situation, May ’68, that was recorded on film [a primary source], this film combines both primary sources [archive footage] and secondary sources [present day footage/interviews], but by showing people literally “digging” for historical remains or describing neglected past histories, it shows that history and our reflections of it are inconclusive, and that is disconcerting for traditional documentary viewers who expect an incontestable conclusion that backs up historical evidence for if history is still being unearthed, then a documentary can only reflect the contemporary views of a particular subject.
In “Nostalgia for the Light” and “The Battle of Chile,” director Patricio Guzman looks at the events of the late 60s and 70s in Chile through two different lenses. In “The Battle of Chile,” he is filming the events as they occur, playing a direct role in history as it unfolds, and in “Nostalgia for the Light,” he is looking back at the events decades later, philosophizing them within the context of the history of the universe. He makes an interesting comparison between a specific nation’s recent history and the “larger” history that archeologists and astronomers seek for in the desert, the sky and stars. Cecilia Ricciarelli describes, “For Guzman, documentary cinema form part of the critical and analytical conscience of a society…it is a true calling that demands complete dedication and a clear ethical position” (3). For Guzman it seems that the ethical way to respond to the military coup and Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship is to continue investigating the past. Though he made a groundbreaking account of the actual events in “The Battle for Chile,” Guzman continues in 2010 to look back at them and analyze them from today’s perspective. In this way, he believes that the documentary still has a role to play in understanding this chapter in Chile’s history. It is not only important to understand the events as they happened, but how they affect Chile today and their reverberations in modern society. Remembering for the sake of remembering could be done by rewatching Guzman’s three part film, but “Nostalgia for the Light” is a modern companion piece that shows audiences that the effects of the dictatorship are still around and there is still a lot that has yet to be uncovered. Like the women searching the desert for loved ones, the archeologists, astronomers, and historians, Guzman shows how documentarians are also involved in the odyssey to discover, analyze, and answer questions about the past. Though their questions may only lead to more questions, the quest for knowledge and understanding of the past is essential to understanding one’s own place in time, and as large as the questions of the universe may seem, Guzman shows even Chile’s recent history is a mystery and unknowable in comparable ways.
ReplyDeleteI am going to begin this blog post with a quote from the essay “Chile: Obstinate Memory,” which reads “ Although in the end the documentary film always implies the discourse of an individual before reality, it was considered essential that the author have a neutral position, never too evident. Guzman speaks of this link as one of the great limitations of documentary film in those years. With time, the documentary has finally liberated itself from this theoretical-or ideological- premise, leaving more space for personal interpretation of reality.” Yes, this is a bit of a long quote, but it presents us with a good way of looking at the documentary genre. In the early days of the documentary, it was considered to be a genre with historian capabilities, able to capture the objective truth of certain situations. But what happens when the objective situation is systematically censored and history purposely forgotten? You get a documentary like Nostalgia For The Light.
ReplyDeleteThe title of the documentary gives us a clue as to what the purpose of the style of the film is. The film intertwines the philosophies and practices of astronomy and archaeology, with the political history of Chile, or lack there of. The film gets the viewer into position to compare this information. Much like an astronomer looks at a star to study the past, a person studying the history of a country would look at past people, through photographs, journals, and other documents. But in Chile, the people have disappeared as have most of the clues; their “star” was swallowed by the void. Thus, the title. A remembrance of what happened to the light, to the people. The film is an attempt to qualify its title. Chile, although brilliant with the stars overhead, is ironically, a land of darkness. And that is Chile’s present, a time with no past. A black hole at the beginning of a story.
p.s- sorry about all the metaphors. The film was asking for it.
I find myself continually returning to the debate between revolutionary cinema and accessible mainstream cinema in regards to getting a message across to audiences in revolutionary times. While I agree with what was said in class on Tuesday about how the non-traditional films are able to communicate to us a much more complex viewpoint with the use of allegory and radical form, I feel as though we might be forgetting that we aren’t necessarily the intended audience for all of the films that we have watched this semester. As Jess pointed out during the presentation, many of the films made in response to the political problems of “Latin America” were made specifically for viewers in the countries in which they were made, not for us. Despite the fact that radical formal departure from more accessible types of cinema can potentially convey more meaning if the viewer is equipped with the education to deconstruct such films, the audiences of countries like Chile and Brazil were widely illiterate and didn’t have access to the type of education that would allow them to glean the political content out of radical films.
ReplyDeleteIt was likely more effective for Patricio Guzmán to show a documentary that explicitly mentions the millions of US dollars that went towards destabilizing the Popular Unity government than to shoot an unconventional narrative film that alludes to collusion between the United States government and the Chilean military. Although the wider Chilean population was undoubtedly aware of the strikes and food shortages, they might not have been aware of the different political forces that were at the root of their problems and would benefit from a straightforward documentary that would inform them. Even with a broad knowledge of the events that occurred before the establishment of the Pinochet regime, footage of small incidents such as the killing of the cameraman during the street battles in the first coup attempt has the potential to make a more personal connection to the Chilean viewer and rile them up against the regime.
Differing from this is Guzmán’s “Nostalgia for the Light”, a documentary that is clearly intended for a wider, international audience. Because the film is meant to reach audiences both in and out of Chile, it moves away from the more blunt references to the events during the Pinochet years and engages with more universal ideas to relate what people in Chile went through to a wider audience. In his combined focus on astronomy, archeology, and the survivors’ quest to find closure with their missing loved ones, Guzmán makes the Chilean struggle more accessible in combination with scientific ideas that are more familiar to Western audiences. Techniques such as the use of computer imaging to superimpose floating dust particles onto representatives of different groups signal to the viewer that all of these people are engaged in essentially the same activity, that of searching the past for either scientific or emotional meaning, and makes each of their struggles that much more relatable.
When I began watching “Nostalgia de la Luz” by Patricio Guzman, I had to double check to make sure I was watching the right documentary. In comparison to “Battle of Chile,” “El Grito,” and “Hour of the Furnaces,” the beginning is gentle, the panoramic views of land, earth, and space are calm and beautiful. The tired voice of the narrator, all too well mirrors the process of the Latin American struggle. It has been a long journey of revolt and repression just like the journey of the universe has been long and full of unknown facts and mysterious, unanswerable questions. The tonality and pace that comes forth from the parallel narration of science and social examinations is, as it title warns, a nostalgic and rather paced depiction. The long shot of a slow-moving train, the panoramic vistas, and even the mothers speaking of horrible stories are framed in the peacefulness and protectiveness of the vast land. It is as if the revolutionary is tired. Tired of looking down. Tired of looking up. Tired of remembering. Tired of forgetting. It is as if Guzman put all the violence in “Battle of Chile,” and he has none left to visually fill “Nostalgia de la Luz.” In the DVD booklet, Cecilia Ricciarelli observes that, “in all his films Guzman vindicates the importance of personal reconstruction and interpretation implicit in the auteur documentary film,” (8) this is perhaps most obvious during the long narration of Guzman’s reflections. His voice is an anchor to remember that behind the camera, there is a person. It is a reminder that this is not a self-moving camera, that “filming reality is as compelling as living it,” (2). Just like fighting the cause, recording the cause has a price. Sometimes it comes at the cost of personal life, as in Leonardo Henrichsen and Raymundo Gleyzer. To watch this documentaries, is to remember that the harsh realities being depicted are being lived by someone who is not protected behind the screen.
ReplyDeletePS: This was in part inspired by the discussion during yesterday's presentation. The point that documentaries seem to be more of a national cinema, specific to its people was a well taken one that left me thinking. For the longest time, I'd considered documentaries the tools to learn about other nations and their struggles, but it seems true that in the aesthetics of revolutionary film making, the price of reaching support of the people, comes at alienating those not in the struggle. And so, the revolution continues and the struggle never dies.
DeleteAs was discussed during the group presentation in class on Tuesday, there is a complex contrast between documentary film and narrative/fiction film. In watching Nostalgia for the Light and The Battle of Chile, I was also struck by this question, especially because both films are directed by Patricio Guzmán. Reading the press kit for The Battle of Chile again underlined the importance of this relationship.
ReplyDeleteIt is paramount to note that the press kit (distributed by Icarus Films) declares Nostalgia for the Light to be “perhaps the most personal film of Guzmán’s career,” while Guzmán more directly participated in and was more directly affected by the events of The Battle of Chile (p. 10). Is Nostalgia for the Light “full of poetry [and] philosophical and personal reflections” because it is relatively a more narrative film (in the sense that it was shot with a clearer plan and at least an idea of where the “story” would end), or because it was created when the director was older and possibly more inclined to self-reflection (10)? Based on the evidence within the films themselves – the more graceful cinematography of the 2010 film, the use of visual and thematic/narrative metaphor, the budget – it seems to be a combination of both…although I do not believe a strict documenting of events allows for such a degree of metaphoric imagery, just because events are occurring as they are being filmed and a greater impact cannot necessarily be appreciated at that point. This is part of a statement later on in that press kit that Guzmán and his collaborators had to “[s]helv[e] their fiction projects until the time when the country might be under more secure political control,” implying that greater artistic realization can be prohibited by political and financial restrictions (14). The documentary film of and in 1968 and the less-strictly-documentary film put out over 40 years after the fact seem to be of entirely different genres – artistically, visually, and narratively, and in terms of the director’s cinematic sensibilities – even though the later film considers, at its core, the same events of The Battle of Chile.
In the text that comes with the DVD Battle of Chile, Guzman’s the film The Battle of Chile is analyzed. In describing the functions of Guzman’s film it is stated, “United with a reflection of the past and memory, his cinema has acquired even more force and maturity”. Argues that The Battle of Chile is using past and memory of Mexico’s history to further engage the viewers and to instigate intellectual thought processes. He goes on to argue that this film maker was one of the first to use subjectivity as a tool in order to educate viewers in documentaries. This idea of portraying the oppression that Mexico was subjected to at the time serves an important role in engaging Mexican viewers in a way that would allow them to put pressure on the issues that were happening at the time, and even issues that are happening contemporarily. In this sense this documentary functions more as a political tool rather than a source of entertainment, and reaches its goals of engagement and maturity. These factors of this documentary also further testify to the notion that Guzman’s film was indeed revolutionary for its time, and currently still effective.
ReplyDeleteWith being part of this week’s presentation, I felt I would have an easier time attempting to interpret the bare bones of the Latin American struggle and what it truly meant to the people. However, as we discussed in our presentation, it seems there is a definite difference in the levels of efficiency a film has in conveying its message. The Battle of Chile, and Nostalgia For the Light are separated by nearly 35 years, but remain both as documents, a straightforward informational film of struggles, revolutions, and aftermaths. However, although I should have expected the stark differences I was completely caught off guard when watching Nostalgia after Battle of Chile, As Jess mentioned in her post, I felt I had to double check that I was watching the right documentary, directed by the right Patricio Guzmán! It is without doubt that the struggle continues, as that was a point we made frequently in our presentation, but it is how the struggle continues that is most interesting. We had information from three main countries as to how the struggle continues, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile; but I found myself questioning how it truly continues. Along with censorship is the fact that it is difficult to reach a reliable and truthful news source to find the truth as to what is happening in the present day. With a film as recent, that shows the aftermath of atrocities done years ago, there is a sigh of relief that comes over in knowing that this must be as close to the truth as possible. Even if Nostalgia For the Light isn’t fit to show students carry Maoist propaganda, or with communist flags draped around their shoulders, it shows that revolution has happened, and the outcome is that it is still happening. Nothing has been settled, and perhaps things never will; Nostalgia with peaceful long shots and sorrow filled aftermaths is, in my opinion, the most clear present day representation of what ’68 meant to Latin America. We can have current day protests, but the disappearances and claustrophobic oppression these ‘Latin American’ countries have is one thing they share in common as 68 happened, and perhaps will continue in line of the people against the government.
ReplyDeleteBoth Patricio Guzmán films, Nostalgia for the Light and both parts of Battle of Chile are documentaries interested in what will happen in the future and trying to be a part of that process. However, these two films completely different films, both in context and generations. The comparison are slim, but through the lens of history, are interested in how they can improve the lives around them
ReplyDeleteThe Battle of Chile a like many of films we have seen in the classroom, an examination of how the government is taking advantages for it people, but for the first part of the series, director Patricio Guzmán more interested in what the people think than the violence around them. He continually asks people on the street “What do you think about the election?” “How are you going to vote?” These questions are more interested about the prospect of the future than what is actually around them. We clearly see as the film go along how it is going to end. In Patricio Guzman’s the Battle of Chile, “the struggle, the drama, and the enthusiasm of the historic moment were imprinted with incredible intensity on that filmed material thanks to a notable maturity in the narrative approach” (5). As Guzmán is hoping for the best while asking these questions, the inevitable conclusion appears to overtake the film.
What is interesting about Nostalgia is that it doesn’t the viewer does not see the connection at first to 68? How does space have to do with this? But as Guzmán connects the plot to the stories how Chilean women looking for their families after fierce dictatorship rule. Nostalgia works as a connection to 68 because it not only has look upon it past but it also a virtual example of what the Battle of Chile accomplished.
Early on in the documentary Nostalgia for the Light an interview is held with a scientist who says "the present doesn't exist.". Although he was not talking about the revolution and it's after math when he said it I find it hard not to put it into the context of revolution and oppression in Latin America. Although the problems of 68 are in the past it's easy to see that they still exist, the revolution and the aftermath of said revolutions echo forward to the modern day. Because of this Chile is still in part anchored to 1968. The present does not exist.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Guzman was able to make a documentary that although is set in the modern day is able to draw on the movements of 68 some 35 years later speaks to the relevance of 1968 in Chile.
In "Nostalgia for the Light", Patricio Guzman effectively uses astronomy and archaeology in the present day as a way of questioning how people remember the past and how they are currently being affected by it. Viewing Guzman's earlier film, "The Battle for Chile Part 1 & 2," seemed to be a lot to take in at first, but after seeing "Nostalgia for the Light," I think that the two films he has created complement each other very well, almost in a similar fashion to "Marianne and Juliane" and "The State I Am In" where there is a gap between the generations and events within the films where something changes. The things that were true in the past are not so clear anymore and people are still searching for the best answers.
ReplyDelete"The Battle for Chile" effectively set us up with the knowledge of the events that occurred in Chile's revolution through dealing with those events very close to the time they actually happened. 35 years later, Guzman returns with "Nostalgia for the Light" to complement his earlier ventures and bring those events full circle. How are they remembered today in Chile? What has the lasting effect been? Why are there questions that still haven't been answered? As the film continued to unfold, I could not help but to think of much of my research on Christian Petzold in New German Cinema and, more specifically, "The State I Am In." Just like in Germany, the events of the past still continue to be relevent, especially for younger generations who are forced to deal with something they may not have been around for. The archaeolgist in "Nostalgia for the Light" reminds the audience that "We cannot forget!". He also ecplains that "The astronomers created an enormous telescope to bring two seemingly incompatible things closer: the origins of everything and the past of everything we are today." The symbolism of astronomy and telescopes are very fitting to the idea that the past is always present. It is always affecting things in some way, even though those events are already over. The question is, how are they effecting the present?
Battle of Chile explored a topic in a way that the other films that we have watched this semester have not. While all documentaries have biases due to the medium and the inability to capture every side of every event, Battle of Chile gives an impression of being particularly removed from a point of view. This is accomplished by the extended periods of time in which there is no narration. The people in the film speak for themselves and the events speak for themselves.
ReplyDeleteThis technique was interesting to me because of the focus that it put on the narrator. One is not subjected to a lecture, but situations and images are explained and framed for the audience. This also allows for the audience to watch the events in a more understanding manner if they were not already familiar with the topics. The introductions and explanations make me question who the target audience of the film was.
If the target audience was solely those who were involved in the revolution, on one side or the other, it seems to me as though there may not even be a need for narration. The signs, chants, and protests would all be at least semi-familiar to those involved. If it is not made for those who were directly involved, perhaps there was a large portion of the population who were ignorant to the situation. These people would have probably been poor and living in a rural environment, which raises the question of how the documentary would reach them anyway. The final explanations are that it could have been made with the intent of educating the youth or educating the world on the events that happened in Chile. Even though the United States played a large roll in the events, most people in the United States almost certainly have no idea that the events had ever occurred.
I am going to go out on a limb and fight that documentary based film like "The Battle for Chile" are actually the clearest forms of revolutionary film. They are harder to watch, but the revolution is not a party. They and the film itself is part of the revolution by being there at the scene when it is happening. In reflection on Marshall McLuhan's "hot" and "cool" media, documentaries like "The Battle of Chile" are always going to fall in the "cool" section when being compared to easy to watch hollywood film. The sequence is not clear to someone who does not have knowledge about Chile's political processes of the time. It takes more participation and outside learning by the viewer to understand context and what is really going on.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in terms of documenting actual time and place and all of its factors, and then folding this into a bigger picture is impossible. But this should not be a slight on documentaries. I create my own narrative after watching "The Battle of Chile." I remember blooper-filled, excited, live action at the beginning, which then gives way to bureaucratic stalemate from the opposing sides after Allende keeps his term. And then ends in live action violence, this is a different, scarier kind of excitement than that at the beginning of the film. This type of narrative, although broad, and missing key players (like the CIA), is not the worst description of the times in Chile, and is more effective as a historical reference than a film that tries to dramatize the coup. The details come from the personal opinions shared by those being interviewed, and were picked to reflect the varying feelings of Chile as a whole. None of those details
Joseph,
ReplyDeleteyour posts ends abruptly, as if you did not fully copy what you had written.
I find “Nostalgia by the Light” one of the most satisfying, and moving documentary that I have seen. At first I was shocked at the stark contrast in production regarding the two viewing films this week by Patricio Guzman. Guzman’s style in itself was kind of dramatic, without the reenactments. However I find a common theme within both of how they use different aesthetics and reflect on the time and space that we measure our lives by. The gap in timing apart from the two films releases gives two different personas of the director. Battle of Chile is a documentary that connects the past with the present, preserving it in time. This film uses the means of just a camera to capture the sights and sounds, as well as human interaction that inevitably would have been lost to time. I believe that Nostalgia by the Light is a reflection on history and its impact on the present. A good scene that was included but didn’t necessarily need to be is the scene about light taking 7 minutes to reach earth, thus everything we see is in the past.
ReplyDeleteMy own personal appeal when it comes to filmmaking is documentary style rather that narrative. I appreciate the rawness that came with both of Guzman’s films. I find it more appealing to connect to the themes of the documentaries because they seem more in the realm of realistic and not idealized. Narratives seem to me as scripted and bias when trying to conclude facts. Guzman’s documentaries elude this problem by leaving out scripted dramatization.
Of course the day after I argue how narrative films speak better to an international audience than documentaries do I watch Nostalgia of the Light and find myself completely in love with the film. However, I think that some of what I said still stands true. Films that use the strengths of cinema (cinematography, editing, sound, etc) to communicate their intention are able to transcend language barriers (even if those films are documentaries). I stand by this because I think that Nostalgia of the Light very effectively uses the mechanics of cinema to enrich its message. Not only that, but both the imagery and the philosophy of the film touch some really interesting existential ideas on top of its politics. I am a total sucker when it comes to space imagery and exploration. I also am deeply fascinated by the fallibility of human perception (everything we observe is technically in the past and the further away we get from a thing, the further in the past we observe that thing). The film has an acute awareness of the irony of Chile's uniquely well suited fixture as a place to observe the history of the universe, while being a place that is willingly ignorant of its recent history. The film's score is also effectively used to highlight the juxtaposition between the majesty of space and the ugliness of the human cruelty by laying the same music over a beautiful nebula as a forgotten, mummified Chilean worker. These are things that speak to me (a foreigner to the language, culture, and history of Chile) much deeper than a documentary like the Battle of Chile. Not that I am saying Battle of Chile is a lesser film for not exercising the same cinematic dexterity as Nostalgia for the Light, because The Battle of Chile certainly has advantage's over Nostalgia for the Light (mainly how candidly it captured the history unfolding in front of it, and the endless bravery it must have taken to film it). I am not sure what to do with that information however. Is it selfish to want for such films to cater to my sensibilities as a foreigner on top of the sensibilities of its own nationality? I would be inclined to say yes. I think that's why it is ultimately up to the filmmaker to decide who they are trying to speak to when making their film.
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