Patricio Guzmàn – filmmaker – The Pearl Button (El Botòn de Nàcar)

This is an extract from the 65th Berlin International Film Festival press conference of the film “The Pearl Button” by Patricio Guzmàn.

For his film, which gravitates the element of the ocean and water with poetry, creativeness and intelligence, Patricio Guzmàn won the best script award at this year’s Berlinale.

Here, Patricio Guzmàn voices his frustration with academic teachings of conventional and structured filmmaking and also talks about his own hardships in getting this documentary made.

Plot – The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.