Documentary Film: Araya
“Araya” is a natural salt mine located in the marshes of a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela which was still being harvested manually 500 years after its discovery by the Spaniards. This extraordinary documentary captures in beautiful but austere images, the hard life of the salt miners and their archaic methods of work before their definite disappearance with the arrival of the industrial exploitation. (1959, in Spanish with English subtitles, 90 minutes.)