Nostalgia for the light

Research for the documentary project People and place

18.11
Our team got together to watch a documentary our tutor recomended to us called Nostalgia for the light. It´s a poetic film by  Patricio Guzmán, about astrology and Augusto Pinochet´s dictatorship set in the Atacama desert. In the words of Guzmán it´s "where human remains are mummified and objects are frozen in time". In the Atacama there are many mummified remains of political prisoners  who "disappered" after the military coup in 1973. The Rotten tomatos review gave the film a score of 100% and summerised it really well; "while astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared whose bodies were dumped here, search, even after twenty-five years, for the remains of their loved ones, to reclaim their families' histories. Melding the celestial quest of the astronomers and the earthly one of the women".

There were a couple of things I found interesting about this documentary. Firstly the visuals are really beautiful and the narration too. It´s like a poem, which links to our project. As this documentary juxtapostions the astronemers searching the night sky and the women looking for their dead realtives, there are many scenes of stars and nightime, which again relates a little to our project (day vs night). We did, however, agree that it was a little slow paced and so didn´t capture our interest as much as it could have. As our documetary is going to be very short so I doubt this will be a problem. There was also a lot of still images used, which is unusual. I don´t think we are going to be using stills though. 
This documentary had some really beautiful trasitions. There were scenes where a cloud of dust would fade into stars or something similair. I think if we are able to do something like this it could look really great. I´m not sure what the plan is yet for the editing. 
Although the subject of this documentary is very different to ours, there were some similarities, possibly in the visuals and narration. For example, there were many scenes showing the sky, during both day and night. The stars were very prominent, which kind of links to our light in the darkness idea. There also is a poeticness to the narration mixed with interviews, which we will hopefuuly achieve. I think this was an interesting watch and might give us some ideas and examples to use.

Nostalgia for the light trailer


We also did some planning while we were at Josh´s. We went through our timetable again, which Alya had done a couple of days ago. I think we all agreed the spacing for everything was good, so if we follow it we will hopefully get everything done in time.  

Our portrait Project is due on the 26th so thats why we have some resting days around then.

We also went through our interview questions and the people we want to interview. 
We want to interview a couple of people with nightshifts (taxi driver, shops), people who get up early for their job (delivery, postmen, binmen, cafes etc), maybe people walking alone at night (do you feel safe?), or in the morning. People who work the whole day outside (garderners) vs people who work inside (office, businesses) (natural vs artificial light) Anne suggested dog walkers and filming the opening of Gail´s bakery. 


Questions:
Are you a morning or an evening person?
What does your ideal morning/evening look like?
How do you feel now that the days are shorter?( Less light, winter)
Do you feel safe after the sun has set?
Do you spend more time in artificial or daylight? Which do you prefer?
(for people who work at night) Is there a sense of seclusion?/ Do you miss out on events, gatherings, parties etc because of your work?

19.11
We had a tutorial with Anne on Tuesday, where Alya, Flora and I talked about our idea and plans. We also went through our questions with her. Anne said we should have already been talking to people and gathering information, which we haven´t done, so that was stressful. This tutorial made me feel like we were super behind in time, but looking at it a couple of days later, I think we´ll be fine. We also had more work to do for the permission from the council and the risk assessment.
She gave us some good ideas and a clearer plan for what´s next.

My notes: