The Pearl Button

Summary

A meditation in vision and sound on the geography and history of Chile, structured around the water which permeates the country and gives life to its inhabitants, looking in particular at the fate of two persecuted groups: the indigenous people and the victims of Pinochet. Topics covered include: the far north of Chile, the most waterless place on earth, where radio telescopes in the desert discover more about the cosmos each day; a schoolfriend washed away by the sea; the lost culture of the native tribes in the far south and how their primitive way of life was destroyed; the story of Jemmy Button, taken from Tierra del Fuego to England; the efforts under Allende to rehabilitate the surviving tribespeople; the concentration camps set up under Pinochet; how inmates were tortured and how their bodies, weighted with lengths of rail, were dropped from helicopters into the Pacific; how one corpse was washed ashore; and finally how one of the lengths of rail recovered from the sea had a mother-of-pearl shirt button encrusted to it.