Araya
A work of such overwhelming grandeur that Jean Renoir told director Margot Benacerraf after viewing the film, “Above all . . . don’t cut a single image,” this poetic documentary-narrative hybrid is a landmark of both neorealist and feminist South American cinema. For five hundred years, the Araya peninsula in northeastern Venezuela has been mined for its salt. Through images of breathtaking beauty, Benacerraf captures the everyday lives of three families and their back-breaking work in the salt marshes, exquisitely preserving an embattled but tenacious way of life.
Starring José Ignacio Cabrujas, Laurent Terzieff
Watch "Araya" from streaming services Criterion Channel, Kanopy released in 1959. It's a documentary and drama movie, and has a rating of 7.6 out of 10 from Imdb which is usually fine for this kind of movie.
Criterion Channel
