THE PEARL BUTTON/ EL BOTON DE NACAR

Chile, 2015, 82 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Patricio Guzman.

A very interesting documentary about Chile, from a well-renowned documentary maker, award-winning, with insights into Chile and its history.

This film, winner of the Ecumenical Award in Berlin, 2015, begins with a cosmic view, symbolised by a block of quartz which contains a drop of water, thousands of years old, with reflection on the cosmos, a reflection on water, on its significance for the world and the Chile. There also scenes of dishes facing into space, gathering information for the 21st century.

However, the director goes back in history, using a device of a group of people unrolling a long carpet-like map of the country, showing how narrow it is, with the Andes and the mountains, and the vast link and extent of the Pacific Coast and its southern islands. Guzman also highlights the original inhabitants, their way of life, the industries, fishing, and how, at the beginning of the 21st century, with British map-makers, there was an intrusion into their way of life and it changed. As with a number of indigenous cultures, the British expeditionaries took individuals to London, dressed them in English clothes, exhibiting them – but, when the individuals returned home, they took off the British clothes and returned to their old way of life.

With the historical information, with the transitions in the 19th and into the 20th century, Guzman finally arrives at the exploitation of the Chilean people, the experience of the dictatorship, the thousands of disappeared, the prisons and conditions, the killing of a number of prisoners by throwing them from planes and helicopters.

Guzman has been long interested in the dictatorship and the Pinochet experience and brings it once again vividly to life in the context of Chilean history and culture.

1. Documentary from Chile, history, geography, ethnology, the colonial destruction, industry, politics?

2. Patricio Guzman and his documentary perspectives on Chile?

3. Visuals, the long coast, islands? The long, unfolding map? The musical score?

4. The block of quartz, the water drop within, history, age, reflections?

5. The significance of water? The importance of the telescopes, the dishes, detecting water in the universe?

6. The original inhabitants, the history, settlement, the centuries, fishing? The British in the 19th century, the colonial attitudes, drawing the map of the coast, taking the local man to England? Exhibiting Jerry Button? His becoming an English gentleman, his return, disrobing, going back to his native state? A symbol?

7. The colonial period, the British, the Spanish, culture, language?

8. Ecology, economy, ethnology?

9. The move to the politics of the 20th century, the dictatorship, the role of Allende and Pinochet? The military, the people disappearing, the thousands arrested, the camps? The photo of the group, the individuals? The interviews?

10. The motivation during the dictatorship? Prison, murders, people pushing victims out of planes? The body washed ashore? Identification? Wounds?

11. The historical perspectives? For Chileans? For the wider public? The world?