Wim Wenders' The Salt of the Earth to be shown in Bridport Camera Club screening

Now April 6, Bridport Camera Club, in association with Bridport Arts Centre, is bringing the international award-winning film back to Bridport.

This time tickets are available to all and the opportunity to see this visually stunning and thought provoking documentary is not to be missed, says camera club member Carol Tritton.

Directed by Wim Wenders, the film follows the life and career of Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. Since he began his career as a professional photographer in 1973, Salgado has travelled the world telling the stories of the planet’s most vulnerable people, torn by conflict, famine and displacement, in haunting black and white images. In 1984, he photographed the famine in Ethiopia; in 1991, the bitter conclusion of the first Gulf war in Iraq; and in 1994, the genocide in Rwanda.

Eventually, having reached a point where he could no longer endure the human suffering he has witnessed, Salgado turns away from photography and returns to his family’s farm, where he sets about reversing the effects of years of neglect and erosion caused by over cultivation. His regeneration methods came to be adopted throughout South America and eventually, the world. In the film, the growth of a seedling on the farm is a metaphor for Salgado’s rejection of despair and rediscovery of hope and faith in mankind, as he embarks on his latest photographic project, Genesis, a record of the discovery of unspoiled territories and astonishing flora, fauna and landscapes and a tribute to the beauty of the planet.

The story is told in the words of co-director Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the photographer’s son, and of Salgado himself and is accompanied by a hypnotic soundtrack by Laurent Petitgand. Painful to watch at times, the film charts the depths of the human race, but overwhelmingly its message is of hope and regeneration.

The Salt of the Earth is showing on April 6 at Bridport Arts Centre at 7.30pm.