Araya

“Araya has lost none of its ability to fascinate and move us with its hypnotic combination of beauty and hardship. It’s a gift to cineastes.”—Steven Soderbergh

“Above all… don’t cut a single image.”—Jean Renoir to Margot Benacerraf after watching Araya

Never released in the US, the remarkable Venezuelan film Araya shared the International Critics Prize with Hiroshima mon amour at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. This lost classic poetically captures life among the salt harvesters working (as they have for hundreds of years) in the arid marshes of the Araya peninsula in Venezuela. Often compared to Italian neorealism and the documentaries of Robert Flaherty, Araya shows the routines, profound joys, and agonies of the region’s laborers. Araya is the latest film rescued from obscurity by Milestone Films, the company that has also restored and rereleased Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba, Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, and Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles. New York magazine declared it “one of the major film discoveries of recent years.” (90 mins., 35mm)

Cinema Latino is cosponsored by the Hispanic Chamber of Columbus.

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