This film is currently unavailable
The Pearl Button
Patricio Guzmán’s lyrical, illuminating follow-up to Nostalgia for the Light explores the fateful role played by water in Chile’s tragic history.
Director: Patricio Guzmán
Overview
Patricio Guzmán’s illuminating follow-up to Nostalgia for the Light is another lyrical exposé of the dark secrets in Chile’s tragic history. Whereas in the prior film Guzmán used the stars and the sands of the Atacama Desert as both starting point and leitmotif for his illuminating meditation on Chilean history, his new film – clearly a sequel yet wholly comprehensible in itself – begins with water.
Exploring the country’s long indented coastline – with Katell Djian’s gliding camera making the most of massive mountains, volcanoes and glaciers – Guzmán investigates the fate of Patagonia’s indigenous tribes: nomadic boatpeople who are now, thanks in no small degree to the arrival of European colonisers, extinct save for a few survivors. (The title alludes in part to one ‘Jeremy Button’, who in the 1830s was brought, disastrously, to Britain to be ‘civilised’.) Like its predecessor, the film proceeds to consider more recent disappearances – of those tortured, killed and dumped in the ocean by Pinochet’s regime. Curiosity, compassion and righteous disgust meet to powerful effect.
Related
Of Time and the City Of Time and the City
Documentary 2008 74 mins Director: Terence Davies
Brilliantly mixing archive film and music, Liverpool-born director Terence Davies reflects with wit and wisdom on a times of change, for good or ill
Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande
Documentary 2022 90 mins Director: Tim MacKenzie-Smith
The incredible story of a band you may never have heard of but whose sound has influenced generations with their irresistible rhythms and message of peace.
Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer
Biopic 2024 90 mins Director: Thomas von Steinaecker
A riveting and all-encompassing portrait of the iconic German filmmaker.
SCALA!!! SCALA!!!
Documentary 2023 96 mins Director: Jane Giles and Ali Catterall
Engrossing tribute to London’s legendary Scala cinema, aptly subtitled: Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world’s wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits.
De Humani Corporis Fabrica De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Documentary 2022 118 mins Director: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel
The psychedelic physicality of this mortal coil – journey into the systems that comprise the human body in this fascinating sensory experience.
Loving Highsmith Loving Highsmith
Documentary 2022 87 mins Director: Eva Vitija
A beautifully textured study revealing the rich and troubled private life of the writer behind Carol.
Air Doll Air Doll
Drama 2009 116 mins Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
A life-size blow-up doll comes to life and falls in love with a video store clerk in Kore-eda Hirokazu’s haunting, melancholy meditation on urban alienation.
Floating Skyscrapers Floating Skyscrapers
Drama 2013 89 mins Director: Tomasz Wasilewski
Hailed as ‘Poland’s first LGBT film’, Tomasz Wasilewski’s striking drama follows a champion swimmer whose gay relationship causes ripples.
Sweet Sue Sweet Sue
Comedy 2022 100 mins Director: Leo Leigh
Bleakly funny comedy-drama starring Maggie O’Neill as a middle-aged woman who begins dating a mysterious biker, whose flamboyant son is a social media influencer.
Bande à part Bande à part
Crime 1964 95 mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Godard's playful tribute to the Hollywood pulp crime movies of the 1940s, executed with typically Gallic cool.
El Sur El Sur
Drama 1983 94 mins Director: Víctor Erice
Victor Erice’s second masterpiece, following The Spirit of the Beehive, is a rarely seen meditation on memory, deception and Spain’s 20th-century history.
Of Time and the City Of Time and the City
Documentary 2008 74 mins Director: Terence Davies
Brilliantly mixing archive film and music, Liverpool-born director Terence Davies reflects with wit and wisdom on a times of change, for good or ill