Mamá, la luz
2018 · 20m
Directed by Matias A. Donoso
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
On a remote mountain in Chiloé, children who usually wait in darkness experience a power cut and begin to watch the approaching night through a camera.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise wants to be profound—children, darkness, a camera—but it plays it too straight, too precious; the experimental gesture feels obligatory rather than genuinely subversive, like it's checking boxes for the essay-film gallery.
Donoso situates this work in a lineage of observational cinema and essayistic pedagogy, where the camera becomes both tool and subject; the formal restraint—allowing the approaching night to unfold through mediation rather than spectacle—demonstrates considered compositional thinking that rewards close viewing.
The decision to frame the night through a camera lens rather than bare eyes transforms what could be maudlin nostalgia into something tactile and strange; that single mediation choice—watching watching—is what makes the melancholy land.