I knew the 1954 movie Salt of the Earth, about a long strike, in 1961, in Mexico. It is a feminist film, showing women striking to support workers struggle for a better work conditions. The film shows how the miners, the company, and the police react during the strike. It's style is neorealist, the producers and director used actual miners and their families as actors in the film. It was a great movie that strengthened my radical feminist point of view and my solidarity with workers' movements.
Miners claimed equal payment and wages with Anglo workers as well as better health programmes for them and their families. Because of the fear of police, the miners' wives replaced them in the strike and stand there firmly into the end. Esperanza Quitero is one of the characters protrayed in the movie, played by Rosaura Revuletas.
I remembered the circle of women with small posters in their hands, and walking around all the day. Also the solidarity among them and from the neighbours to support with food, medicines and whatever they need to go on striking for so long time.
Tonight, I saw another The Salt of the Earth, a Brazilian-French and Italian biographical documentary directed by Wim Wenders — the director of Der Himmel über Berlin —, and Sebastião Salgado's son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. I knew some of the photographs of Sebastião Salgado but I didn't imagine how much he had worked. The movie received many awards, the Cannes Festival Special Prize and César Award for Best Documentary Film. In the team of the producers, there is also Wim Wenders, but also Lélia Wanick Salgado, Sebastião's wife, and David Rosier, Julia de Abreu, Fakhrya Fakhry, Andrea Gambetta and Christine Ponelle.
The movie shows how important his wife was in his career — Lélia Wanick Salgado.References:
Salt of the Earth (1954) written by Michael Wilson, directed by Herbert J. Biberman, and produced by Paul Jarrico.
Salt of the Earth (2014) written by Wim Wenders, Juliano Salgado and David Rosier, Directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Salgado and produced by Wim Wenders, but also Lélia Wanick Salgado, Sebastião's wife, and David Rosier, Julia de Abreu, Fakhrya Fakhry, Andrea Gambetta and Christine Ponelle.
