07-19-2020, 10:05 AM
This was LCF's choice for family viewing last night. It's about Chile's Atacama Desert, a plateau that is the driest place on Earth, which, along with its altitude, makes it ideal for telescopes. That is where LCF journeyed last year -- intending to see the total solar eclipse, but delaying her trip a couple weeks after learning that bigshots would be hoarding all the available lodging for that major event.
As it turns out, the Atacama Desert is also ideal for preserving buried things, and while this documentary does touch upon the astronomical activities and significance of the place, it also delves into the atrocities committed thereabouts under Pinoche's dictatorship: people (men, mostly) were rounded up and murdered. Now women (wives, daughters, granddaughters, etc.) are leading the effort to dig up victim's remains and preserve their memory for a more enlightened future.
Anyway, this is a slow and ponderous documentary, well done, but not what I was expecting and I doubt what LCF was expecting. After The Human Condition and Indian Horse, I was really needing something more upbeat.
I have an idea. I'll check the news!
As it turns out, the Atacama Desert is also ideal for preserving buried things, and while this documentary does touch upon the astronomical activities and significance of the place, it also delves into the atrocities committed thereabouts under Pinoche's dictatorship: people (men, mostly) were rounded up and murdered. Now women (wives, daughters, granddaughters, etc.) are leading the effort to dig up victim's remains and preserve their memory for a more enlightened future.
Anyway, this is a slow and ponderous documentary, well done, but not what I was expecting and I doubt what LCF was expecting. After The Human Condition and Indian Horse, I was really needing something more upbeat.
I have an idea. I'll check the news!
I'm nobody's pony.