Popular poet and Communist Senator Pablo Neruda opposes the administration of President Gabriel Gonzáles Videla and denounces his brutal repression in a speech in the National Congress in 1948. Threatened with arrest, he goes underground. Refusing to live the life of a fugitive, he taunts the government authorities by appearing in public venues or leaving evidence of his movements. His pursuer is the fascist Chief of the Investigations Police of Chile Oscar Peluchonneau.

After fifteen years of military dictatorship and facing considerable international pressure, Chile's government asks the public of Chile to vote in the national plebiscite of 1988 on whether General Augusto Pinochet should stay in power for another eight years, or whether there should be an open democratic presidential election the following year.

Nostalgia For The Light is a documentary released in 2010 by Patricio Guzmán to address the lasting impacts of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.Guzmán focuses on the similarities between astronomers researching humanity’s past, in an astronomical sense, and the struggle of many Chilean women who still search, after decades, for the remnants of their relatives executed during the dictatorship. Patricio Guzmán narrates the documentary himself and the documentary includes interviews and commentary from those affected and from astronomers and archeologists.

The last 3 nights of our 2017 Films & Spanish Conversation Meet-Ups will explore how three of the most critically acclaimed Chilean films of the past decade blend documentary and fiction techniques to tackle some of the nation's most controversial moments. The series will take us from a government's wild hunt of a beloved poet-turned-fugitive (Neruda), to a marketing team's efforts against the continuation of Pinochet's dictatorship (No), and finally, to the Atacama desert. A place filled with astronomers looking at the stars and women searching the sand for the bones of their loved ones.(Nostalgia For The Light)