Title: The Salt of the Earth
Director: Wim Wenders & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado
Starring: Sebastião Salgado.
The great Wim Wenders returns to documentary. ‘The Salt of the Earth’ is an ode to the social photographer Sebastião Salgado, co-directed with the photographer’s son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.
The Brazilian artist of the camera, who has traveled in over 100 countries for his photographic projects, is captured by a master of the film industry, through a subtle narrative overlap of storytelling and photographic material. The documentary’s cinematically exquisite journey is accompanied by Laurent Petitgand’s celestial music score.
Wim Wenders chooses to name this documentary using the same title of the 1954 American drama, ‘The Salt of The Earth,’ directed by Herbert J. Biberman. This film was one of the first to advance the feminist and political perspective and was set in the 1951 strike against the Empire Zinc Company in New Mexico. Hence the leitmotiv of the true essence of our planet – i.e. the salt of the earth – seems to be human equality, brotherhood and freedom.
The 70-year-old Sebastião Salgado, who has traveled to nearly every corner of the Earth for more than 40 years, witnessed the most tragic and catastrophic events in recent history; revolutions and international conflicts, the genocides in Rwanda, the wars in Yugoslavia, the starvations in Ethiopia, the Saddam Hussein-devastated Kuwaiti oilfields, mass exoduses around the globe and more.
Wenders’ ultimate work explodes into a feast for the senses, through a powerful Odyssey, where Salgado is our Ulysses attempting to denounce a world of suffering and the beautiful potential of planet Earth.
Most of Salgado’s photos have appeared in numerous press publications and books; whilst touring exhibitions of his work have been presented throughout the world. His images have the power to grasp the soul of a collective conflict and that of an individual turmoil, always in the full respect of the human being’s dignity. The most dramatic episodes that occur worldwide are captured by his lenses, from death to suffering. Every snapshot is never invasive nor profiteering of people’s misfortunes. It’s rather the attentive deposition of a conscientious man who reveals a social complaint. It won’t surprise to discover that Salgado is a UNICEL Goodwill Ambassador, awarded Foreign Honorary Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was given The Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship.
Technical: B
Story: B
Overall: B
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
