The salt of the Earth

Hello, my dear readers. There are days when everything around me seems blurry, shapeless, meaningless, and I find myself looking for a reason behind my creation, and the creation of everything else as well, too. I ask myself lots of questions, which I never find satisfying answers to, and my levels of motivation drop significantly. It’s actually quite a common thing for an INFP such as me, but no matter how hard I try, I am never able to completely fight that overwhelming sense of hopelessness living at the bottom of my soul. I bet you might know that feeling as well. Many people do, but they will never admit it, not to appear too weak or sentimental. Anyway, I labelled my state as something a bit problematic, and I wanted to find a solution. I needed something beautiful to put my mind at ease. Upon my search, I came across a trailer of the documentary called “The Salt of the Earth”. It was a moment filled with sweetness, as I found my little salvation.

      Source/copyrights: imdb.com

 

Upon reading the title many of you may recall the words from the Bible:

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

 

The documentary was named like that for a certain reason. It is an expressive narrative of Sebastião Salgado, a famous photographer, who – during over 40 years of his work around the world – has seen many shades of the world and witnessed a whole spectrum of human pain and tragedy. Having seen great famine and wars and conflicts in every corner of our planet, he fell victim to hopelessness. After seeing people do the most horrible thing to other people, to the animals and the planet, his soul became ill, and his body followed despite being in a perfect condition. This is when he decided to change the way he worked: he started documenting the beauty of the world, paying tribute to the planet Earth. The entire documentary is a journey through his life.

It is full of astonishing photos, gripping stories and unbelievable wide range of emotions. We are shown the evidence of the war between Tutsi and Hutu in Africa, people fleeing their home in former Yugoslavia but also the most beautiful fauna and flora of the planet. It is much more than a display of terror and hopelessness of the planet. It is a story of hope, and the world as it is, beautiful and deranged, cruel and blooming.

                         Copyrights: Sebastião Salgado/// The blind Tuareg woman

                 Copyrights: Sebastião Salgado / Genesis

Of course, I should mention its creators as well. The documentary was released in 2014 and directed by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and Wim Wenders. They, along with the entire crew, made a great job at creating what I call a masterpiece. They showed the world’s brutality in detail and still managed to capture the beauty left in the world, making me think that perhaps, there’s still hope, there’s still a chance of salvation despite everything we have done, are doing and we yet to do. The moment I and my friend Sasha walked out of the cinema, we both smiled and cried, struck by the beauty of what we saw. I would definitely recommend you to watch this documentary, as you are probably not going to regret it. I didn’t.

That would be all for today. Stay awesome, and thanks for sticking with me.

Have a lovely day,
Jessie