Manthast Absolutely amazing

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Melanie Bouvet The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

tasoslinardo I found the documentary a bit boring. The story about this family and his kids etc didnt make sense to me and i didnt like the scenario or wenders close up of the photographer all the time. I found this a very narcissistic film and not a great story.

Regina Zervou Wenders is one of the most challenging directors of our times. Though the last years he seems to have run out of ideas, he can still direct a fabulous documentary when the prime material is a diamond: Salgado, the best photographer of all times.Sebastao Salgado is a legend.He as taken the most deep views on human nature and pain. He has let himself exposed to the extremes of human cruelty and destruction, he has faced poverty and death and this devastated.The pictures taken from his beloved Africa, followed by a concussive description of unknown to us dramas of thousands and millions of people, remind us of what man is capable to do to one another, how no one on this planet can claim innocence.However, the outcome is not despair. Man, and that is the main attribute given to Salgado, always finds his way to hope. The film lyrically leads us from the absolute despair about the future of human kind to the rediscovery of nature and the wild that ends up rendering a deforested piece of Amazonian jungle back to its former state, giving back to nature what was taken from her. Yes, the Salgado family had the strength to do it. Yes, the human kind has the strength to do it.This fabulous story is narrated through the most miraculous black and white pictures and portraits ever taken. A homage to Man and Nature, that is what the movie is about.

markgorman You may not consider a two hour documentary, that is in large part a slideshow of Brazilian Social photographer Sebastião Salgado's portfolio, featuring many, many dead and mutilated bodies, a significant proportion of them children and babies would be the recipe for entertainment but, trust me, it is.This movie, co-directed and produced by Wim Wenders and Salgado's son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, should be essential viewing for anyone with any interest in humanity, humanitarian aid and politics because the vast bulk of it covers Salgado's career as a social photographer who specialised in capturing images of large populations of the displaced and downtrodden or victims of natural disaster and war. This takes in Eritrea, Rwanda, Kosovo, the Oil fires of Kuwait, left in Saddam's wake, and the biblical and truly epic nature of his most famous work; the gold mines of Brazil where up to 50,000 men gold prospected in deep pits of mud.Wender narrates and Salgado Jr and Hugo Barbier share cinematography duties. That's no small undertaking as they are filming a master at work and in the flesh, but somehow their cameras are every bit as inspiring as Salgado Sr's. As the film develops we see where this fame has taken Salgado, back to his native Brazil where he has established a conservation project of such dramatic scale that it has been transformed into a natural park. It's a remarkable achievement.Salgado's photography places him in the most esteemed company in photographic history (with Ansell Adams he ranks as my personal favourite - coincidentally both photograph strictly in monochrome). What makes this tribute so moving is Salgado's personal reminiscences of how he witnessed children die and wars that are so utterly pointless. At one point we see an image of a man placing his dead baby onto a vast pile of dead bodies - of Holocaust proportions. Salgado says, and I paraphrase, "He turned away almost chatting to his friend so inured was he to the horror in which he was living."Towards the end it all gets too much for him, he very nearly breaks down. The audience is with him the way.This is a must see film. Really must see on so many levels. A straight 10/10.

graupepillard THE SALT OF THE EARTHA documentary on the photographer, Sebastiao Salgado's passion for exposing worlds that are hidden from our view as well as the undercurrents of man's greed, violence and inhumanity - all through what co-director Wim Wenders explains is the process of " drawing with light." The other director is Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the photographer's son. For many years, I have been beguiled by Salgado's black and white imagery, particularly as source material and inspiration for many of my own late 1980s pastels. His representations are stark and at the same time filled with an expanse of tones - from the deep darkness of coal to the blinding whites which shine with the force of incorporeality; a range of imperceptibly varied grays sandwiched in-between - all breathtakingly beautiful and often reduced to abstract patternings which are in danger of overtaking his subjects, but Salgado is a master at balancing form and content.I was particularly moved by his photographs of the fierce deprivation that droughts and famine had wreaked on Sub- Saharan Africa - particularly Ethiopia. Because Salgado exposed situations that many people were not aware of, his photos drilled a space for perception into our consciousness. Salgado has traveled to over 100 countries - projects often lasted years and the resulting books include OTHER AMERICAS, WORKERS, SAHEL - THE END OF THE ROAD, MIGRATIONS, Africa, and most recently GENESIS - the book that became his respite after years away from his native environs, witnessing the globe's devastation, including chronicling the genocide in Rawanda and the Congo. By the late 1990's he was heartbroken: "We humans are a terrible animal; we are extremely violent…Our history is a history of war; it's an endless story…My soul was sick…I no longer believed in anything, in any salvation for the human species." (Quotes from Kenneth Turan's review in LA Times.) THE SALT OF THE EARTH invites us to enter Salgado's personal sphere; we meet his beloved wife Leila, the enduring relationship of his life, the editor of his photographs; the mother of Juliano and Rodrigo - the youngest born with Down syndrome; the compassion and love that unites the entire family in their own personal struggles with domesticity, and the enormous achievement of reclaiming the cattle ranch that was once Salgado's home near the town of Aimores in Brazil's state of Minas Gerais. Memories of the fecund greenery and waterfalls were incised into Sebastiao's childhood recollections and when he returned in the 1990's his homeland was an environmental disaster - dry and parched. Salgado, his spirit quenched by regarding the pillage, and spoliation around the universe was re-invigorated by Leila's dream of planting a forest in Brazil starting with a few trees and "returning the property to its natural state of subtropical rainforest…and in April 1998 they founded the Instituto Terra, an environmental organization…which has now been declared a Private Natural Heritage Reserve, some 17,000 acres of deforested and badly eroded land… have undergone a remarkable metamorphosis…More than four million seedlings native to Brazil's Atlantic Forest have been raised in the institute's own nursery…" * This resuscitation propelled Salgado to travel again focusing on the beauties of the planet, resulting in his latest book GENESIS. ( *About us -The Instituto Terra.) http://bit.ly/1JQQzvd The documentary uses Salgado's majestic photographs interspersing them with site visits to previously unrecorded locations, including old color footage; using his voice and conversations to great effect. We get a sense of the quiet strength of this man, his commitment to justice and the deep suffering that his vision extracts with the lens of a camera. The plethora of interchangeable living beings moving about silhouetted against the background of clouds billowing in the infinite skies, underscore the brevity of time and existence. We are only here for a short interval and Salgado's output is a plea for respect, justice and accommodation among the men/women/animals and the frangible cosmos we all inhabit.