The above footage was shot in Chile's Atacama desert, which is the subject of Patricio Guzmán's beautiful documentary "Nostalgia for the Light," reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir:
Astronomers come there from all nations because the humidity-free skies render celestial bodies brilliantly clear; archaeologists come there because human remains and artifacts from thousands of years ago are perfectly preserved; and bereaved mothers, wives and sisters come there because Pinochet's regime apparently buried the bodies of hundreds of kidnapped and executed dissidents there in the '70s and '80s.
All these people, Guzmán observes, are concerned with the past, and at least indirectly with the most profound and unanswerable questions about the nature and meaning of human existence. (Remember that the starlight we see from Earth has been traveling through space for many years; astronomers viewing the most distant galaxies are literally looking billions of years back in time.) As one astronomer explains, there is almost no such thing as the present — a fact observed by St. Augustine 1,600 years ago — and another observes that the atoms of calcium in the bones of Indians and dissidents interred in the Atacama were forged long ago by the stars, perhaps in the Big Bang itself.
Charles Mudede shares some equally high praise.
The Dish 