“The Salt of the Earth”, directed by Juliano Robeiro Salgado
and Wim Wenders, is a moving biography of Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao
Selgado.
The film offers an enormous library of otherworldy stills,
mostly in black and white, and some super 8 live video of many areas of the
developing world, especially those areas most torn by war and famine.
The film opens with a shot of thousands of miners in an open
gold mine pit in Brazil, all working for a fortune, climbing over one another
around the put in rope ladders. Soon
Selgado, now 71 (I think his oldest son is one of the directors) explains that
he gave up a career as an economist to become a journalist. His tone reminds one of Werner Herzog. His life was like Anthony Bourdain without the
home-cooked food. Besides documenting the work to restore the forests in the
Brazilian highlands around his own Drogheda, he travels to most conflict areas
of the world, especially Ethiopia, Rwanda and the Congo, as well as Bosnia
(where people used to a European standard of living suddenly had nothing). He
visits Eskimo tribes in Siberia, and the red-skinned natives in the Amazon,
where the women have different kinds of husbands. Also on his wonder list is New Guinea.
There is a lot of nude photography, particularly of native
people in starvation. There are scenes
of mass camps in Africa, served by Doctors without Borders.
There is also some animal photography, showing gorillas
recognizing themselves in mirrors, and a whale’s respect for a visiting boat
and crew photographing her. Salgado
believes that wild animals will learn to recognize and interact with individual
humans whom they perceive as non-threatening.
The official site is here (Sony Pictures Classics).
I saw this film at the AMC Shirlington Theater in Arlington
before a small Friday evening audience.
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