Araya

Name: Araya
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 1 h 30 min
Rating: 7.6
Cast: José Ignacio Cabrujas, Laurent Terzieff

IMDb RATING

7.6/10

792

YOUR RATING

Documentary

"Araya" is an old natural salt mine located in a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela which was still, by 1959, being exploited manually five hundred years after its discovery by the Spanish.... Read all"Araya" is an old natural salt mine located in a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela which was still, by 1959, being exploited manually five hundred years after its discovery by the Spanish. Margot Benacerraf captures in images, the life of the "salineros" and their archaic metho... Read all"Araya" is an old natural salt mine located in a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela which was still, by 1959, being exploited manually five hundred years after its discovery by the Spanish. Margot Benacerraf captures in images, the life of the "salineros" and their archaic methods of work before their definite disappearance with the arrival of the industrial exploita... Read all

Director
- Margot Benacerraf
Writers
- Margot Benacerraf
- Pierre Seghers
Stars
- José Ignacio Cabrujas
- Laurent Terzieff

See production, box office & company info

IMDb RATING

7.6/10

792

YOUR RATING

See production, box office & company info

See more at IMDbPro

Awards
- 1 win & 1 nomination

Trivia
The filming crew consisted of just director Margot Benacerraf and her cinematographer Giuseppe Nisoli.

Connections
Featured in Madame Cinéma (2018)

User reviews12

Review

Featured review

Well made but tedious....

Margot Benacerraf made this documentary about the hard and tedious life of workers in Venezuela who dry out and then transport salt from their marshes. It's backbreaking work and goes on day after day with no end. Not surprisingly, it makes for some VERY tedious and dull viewing. What makes it even worse is that the film often is very artsy (such as the first seven minutes of the film during which there is no narration AND the camera seems to focus on anything but the salt or the workers). Certainly this is not a film to be enjoyed by the average viewer (they'll hate it) but is best seen as an ethnographic documentary about a tough way of life back in 1959. I have no idea if this sort of work continues to this day. Nice camera-work (when it's not focusing on clouds, cacti or other irrelevant stuff) but also a film that defies my ability to give it a numerical score. And, it also bored me to tears.

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