Araya

Released in 1959 and directed by Margot Benacerraf, who would go on to found the Cinemateca Nacional in Venezuela, Araya is a breathtaking and intimate documentary portrayal of the self-sacrificing souls who inhabit the Araya Peninsula of Venezuela, toiling from day to night and night to day. Following several characters who work monotonous, drudging patterns on the peninsula in order to survive its harsh terrain, Benacerraf calls attention to the archaic and inhumane methods of manual labor that the Spanish monarchy instilled on their colonized land centuries before. The Araya Peninsula is barren, and survival is dependent on the natural salt mines and fishing in the Caribbean Sea. From birth until death, all of Araya’s inhabitants dedicate their existences to these means of subsistence on land where nothing grows. The film culminates in the appearance of industrial machinery, representing an end to the brutal conditions of manual labor on the peninsula, yet introducing a new calamity: How will the manual laborers now make a living on land that has nothing else to provide? With the arrival of modernization to the peninsula, Araya serves as a bittersweet time capsule that preserves a way of life and ancient traditions that existed for centuries and would soon become extinct. The scintillating images of the salted terrain and sun reflections on the seawater provide the film with a beauty that works in tension with the trodden and dedicated characters who pass through the frames. This striking work of poetic realism is one of only two films directed by Benacerraf, and following its premiere at Cannes in 1959, Araya virtually disappeared for decades.