The Salt of the Earth

2014 "A Journey With Sebastião Salgado"
The Salt of the Earth
8.4| 1h50m| PG-13| en| More Info
Released: 29 August 2014 Released
Producted By: La Région Île-de-France
Country: Italy
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.

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Reviews

Vihren Mitev This film is a photographic and anthropological insight into human nature. It tells us many stories. For example, that one in which people run instead of walk. Or that in which people live above the clouds or that about people who can play a musical instrument and does not meet the need to work a day. The landscapes are changed one after another - deserts, glaciers, tropics.The tape has a deeper part - we find communities that need to use the services of consultants for the use of second-hand coffins. Those who are fleeing genocide, hunger, thirst and lack of natural living conditions. For a moment we touch the cruelty of humanity, which surprisingly, lives quite close to us - both in time and in space.The only thing that is constant in the film is the magical view of life that the photographer Sebastião Salgado has. The story goes retrospectively in the direction opposite of Darwinian evolution in terms of emotional and intellectual development. However, the movie remains a "love letter" from Salgado to mankind and nature, which gives us at the end the needed dose of positivism with which to start acting on things that depend on us!My Blog: http://vihrenmitevmovies.blogspot.bg/
takezo-81010 Sebastia Salgado is a great man, who loves humans and nature. His work as photographer is astonishing: natural scenes or human disasters, Salgado shootings always reach their targets: showing the world as it is.How to make a documentary about a photographer? By showing beautiful images, of course! But also by making an efficient scenario. From the past to present of Sebastio, we can follow the story of the man, the story of the artist, and the story of earth, as Sebastio has always followed the rhythms of the world to build his books and choose his theme.Photograph lover or humble spectator will enjoy this documentary . Go for it!
Christian I went to see this critically acclaimed film with my friend photographer who had studied and emulated Sebastião Salgado well received and revered black and white work.I had seen a suggestive and interesting movie trailer and was later pleased, doing my research, to see Wim Wenders involved. He had done the daring, decisive, eclectic, artistic tribute to Pina (2011) which I loved and to a lesser extent was able to catch some of the essence of Cuba and its music in Buena Vista Social Club (1999). Wenders is remarkable here and sets the tone. Now the other revelation as the co-writer/director as well as co-cinematographer is Sebastião Salgado's son: Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.Juliano documents his father (and parts of his own) life and journey and makes the piece even more personal. This reminded me of the moving tribute of Nathaniel Kahn to his dad Louis Kahn in My Architect (2003) with a huge difference being that Sebastião Salgado (and even the grandfather Sebastião Salgado senior) were still alive to film together as opposed to a posthumous search for the trace of one's father through his work and people's anecdotes in the case of Khan.As for the movie itself it is a treat to the eyes, heart, head and soul. It combines beautiful and often haunting photographs with story, narration, interview and introspection. It tell the tales in three prominent continents of the continuous search for understanding of humanity's worse and best achievements and attitudes. It conveys, loss, fear, hopelessness, innocence, injustice and intolerance. It talks about war, politics, environment, economics, etc. Salgado was surprisingly an economist before leaving his steady job with a dream and his wife's camera to wander in Africa in search of human truth.He found that and more. A talent and an eye for camera, for capturing the man and the moment. The past, the future, the present and the context. The composition and the subtext... the sublime!Will everyone appreciate this film? Probably not. Yet for those who have the interest, the patience and the chance to see this documentary and delve into the decades of work, thoughts, themes and realizations of one man (and his loving, equally brave and brilliant, supportive family) will be greatly enriched and inspired by it. This film is like talking to a father wise beyond his years. A wisdom shared and mutually understood if not lived. Lived through his words and pictures. Because beyond all the darkness and difficulties, there is a light.Photography come from phōs meaning lightAnother documentary for the ages.
CleveMan66 Watching a documentary can be a powerful experience. A good documentary does what any good film does – entertains, educates and makes you feel something. Of course, a documentary is usually more concerned with the last two of those three, but if it does them well, the entertainment value will inevitably be part of the mix. It's also worth noting that the documentary has the impact of truth and reality on its side. Few feature films can match the raw emotional power of a well-done documentary about a compelling subject – especially one that relates to the lives of the audience. You get all of that with "The Salt of the Earth" (PG-13, 1:50), a 2014 Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature.The film traces the career of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, a man whose initial career path was about as far from the arts as you can get, but nevertheless has made an indelible mark on the way we see the people and the lands that are part of this planet we all share. Salgado started studying law in college, but switched majors and ended up getting a master's degree in economics. He began using his wife's camera to document his travels in Africa on missions for the World Bank. Soon, he and his wife, Lélia, both came to realize that Sebastião could have a bigger and more positive impact with his life by using his obvious natural talent as a photographer, showing people both what was right and what was wrong with the world in which we live. With his understanding of economic conditions and global trade informing the projects he chose for himself, he went from working as a photojournalist to being part of an international organization of photographers, to striking out on his own, with Lélia as his main supporter, his chief adviser and his primary photo editor. Famed gallery curator Hal Gould has said that Salgado is the most important photographer of the early 21st century. To learn Salgado's story is to discover that statements like that one are difficult to dispute.Salgado's photo projects often lasted years and flowed organically, one into the next, based on his interests and the things he learned along the way. In this documentary, we see him discover the lesser known areas of his native South America (and into Central America) for his project "The Other Americas". The poverty and desperation that he uncovered led him to explore a part of the world with similar problems, the Sahel region of Africa, a continent to which he would make many trips in his career. These experiences led him to other long-term projects, documenting "Workers" all over the world and then helping to publicize the plight of refugees in "Migrations". This latter project and his ongoing interest in Africa resulted in Salgado covering the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. The horror he witnessed caused Salgado to put down his camera, but his contributions to helping us all understand our world through his photography did not end there. In fact, not only would he pick up his camera many times in the years to come, but he and his family have ended up making contributions to the planet that may have a much bigger impact than the photos that he has shown in galleries and published in books all over the world."The Salt of the Earth" was directed by two men who can only be seen as the perfect team to bring Sebastião Salgado's story to life. Wim Wenders, a previous Oscar nominee for his documentaries "Pina" and "Buena Vista Social Club", brings his experience and expertise to this film, not only as a lauded documentarian, but also as a photographer. Wenders' co-director is none other than Sebastião Salgado's son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, who tells his father's story through the eyes of someone who grew up enduring his father's extended absences, but as an adult, began to accompany Sebastião on his globe-trotting adventures.As Juliano narrates and shoots Sebastião's story and Wenders procduces, we see a man apply his impressive intellect not to making himself rich, but to enriching our understanding of the world in which we live – and how we can make it better. We see a man who once sported a bushy beard and a twinkle in his eye transform into a man whose face and head are devoid of hair and whose impenetrable eyes belie the emotion that occasionally cracks his voice as he talks about his experiences. We see a man of uncompromising artistic integrity and a seemingly bottomless well of personal energy and concern for the earth and its inhabitants. In short, we see a small portion of a unique body of work and we get to know the man behind those photographs and other projects that make him so unforgettable.This film steers clear of the frills of many documentaries and lets the photographer's stark black and white images speak for themselves, many on screen for a brief moment when the camera seems to move through them to reveal the face of the man telling the stories behind the photos. This film starts very slowly and never gets to a point that one would describe as exciting, but there is no denying the impact of the images, the stories they tell and the singular importance of Sebastião Salgado, the man behind the camera. "B+".