Araya

“A gift to cineastes” (Stephen Soderbergh), this luminous restoration of the almost-forgotten Araya – co-winner, with Hiroshima, Mon Amour, of the Critics’ Prize at Cannes in 1959 – comes courtesy of Milestone Films, the company responsible for the re-releases of I Am Cuba, Killer of Sheep, and The Exiles. “This majestic documentary portrait from 1959, of several families on Venezuela’s vast and arid salt-marsh peninsula, is the only feature film by its director, Margot Benacerraf. Its arresting first images of sea and sky evoke a vast historical arc in which her modern-day subjects — mainly, a seemingly timeless horde of salt miners on their rugged and monotonous rounds — gradually emerge from teeming anonymity. The Pereda family, like others in the area, exerts itself mightily to build a literal pyramid of salt, only to break it down into sacks of salt for sale. At the nearby sand beach, the Ortiz family, which survives through fishing, carefully calculates what they must consume and what they can afford to sell. Benacerraf’s grandiose style captures the drama of subsistence in the face of glorious but indifferent nature; the overwhelming beauty of the wide-open spaces contrasts with the workers’ long and burdened trudges through them” (Richard Brody, The New Yorker). “Wonderfully restored . . . I can compare the film only to Luchino Visconti's great La Terra Trema for its combination of extraordinary beauty, outraged social conscience and almost mythic grandeur . . . The experience was stunning in 1959. It’s every bit as stunning today” (Stuart Klawans, The Nation). B&W, 35mm, in Spanish with English subtitles. 82 mins.

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► Plays in a double-bill with Inferno.