Since being presented the Palme D’Or and Best Director credits at the Cannes Film Festival for Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987) respectively, German filmmaker Wim Wenders continues to be intrigued by the human condition has ceased to allow his intrigue of the human condition to weaken. Wenders’ more recent films Buena Vista Social Club (1999) and Pina (2011) are examples of his continuing ability to show us the beauty of the human spiritfocus audiences’ adornment of the human spirit to certain individuals.

In his 2014 documentary film-His newest film, called The Salt of the Earth (2015), Wenders, the German-born filmmaker who has been making films for four decades, focuses his camera on Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado.

After abandoning a promising career in economics in 1973, Salgado decided to devote his life to photography. Travelling to more than 100 countries, Salgado embarked on what he describes as social projects. The two- to seven-year-long projects documented some of the world’s most remote sites of poverty, genocide, environmental catastrophes and forgotten cultures.

During these projects Salgado would completely submerge himself into the lives of those at the bottom of mine pits; those devastated by oil field explosions; and those fighting for their lives.  

Salgado’s son,  teamed up with Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, (Sebastiao’s son) in worked with Wim Wenders on the documentary about his father, offering order to gain further insight into the renowned photographer, ethnographer and self-proclaimed witness to the human condition, Sebastiao Salgado.

After abandoning a promising career in economics in 1973 Salgado decided to devote his life to photography. Travelling to over 100 countries Salgado embarked on what he describes as ‘social projects.’  The 2 – 7 year long projects documented some of the world’s most remote sites of poverty, genocide, environmental catastrophes and forgotten cultures.

Sebastiao would completely submerge himself into the lives of those at the bottom of mine pits, those devastated by oil field explosions, those ravaged by hunger, those fighting for their lives and those dispossessed by time.  Remarking on the experience of photographing these many lives and the places they dwelled Sebastiao muses, “in a split second I saw unfolding before me the history of mankind.”

The result is that The Salt of the Earth has received the Special Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and has been nominated for  

Best Documentary Feature Nomination for the 2015 Academy Awards. and Special Jury Prize 2014 Cannes Film Festival,

The Salt of the Earth is not a mainstream environmentalist documentary.  It pivots the focal point away from the subjects of Salgado’s photography, and onto subjects that Sebastiao chooses to devote his attention to. Instead, by the way of their reticent treatment of Sebastiao’s subjects, Wenders and the young Salgado focus on the eye of this great photographer – a brave eye that is able seldom matched in its ability to stare human decay and the sons of mother nature in the face and capture it them with grace and humility.

The Salt of the Earth screens alongside Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas’ 2014) during the Yukon Film Society’s Available Light Cinema, which takes place at 5 p.m. on Sunday, September 20th at the Yukon Arts Centre.  Go toVisit www.YukonFilmSociety.com for film trailers and more screening events and film trailers.

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