THE Q&A: MARGOT BENACERRAF, FILMMAKER, DOCUMENTARIAN

When "Araya" made its debut at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, the fictionalised documentary stunned critics with its sober beauty. The film chronicles the lives of three families working in Araya, Venezuela's barren salt marshes, where locals endure a harsh lifestyle dependent on the sea. Two days after its premiere, "Araya" shared the prestigious International Critics Award with Alain Resnais's "Hiroshima, mon Amour", now a classic, and it made a sensation of Margot Benacerraf, a 32-year-old, Venezuelan-born, Paris-trained filmmaker—"Araya" was her first feature-length film.

But unlike Resnais's "Hiroshima", which was later nominated for an Oscar, "Araya" never found an official distributor. Fifty years later it has remained obscure, despite its importance to the history of both Latin-American and documentary film. Thanks to Milestone Films, "Araya" is finally getting its due; a restored print of the film in now travelling the world in a limited theatrical release.

We spoke to Benacerraf, now 83 (pictured below), about how the scripted documentary has endured for half a century. "It was not a documentary of the salt harvest," Bencerraf says now. "It was a poetic narration about this part of the world: everything that is against them, the sun and the wind, and the aridity, and the difficulty of having the salt to harvest. It was [about] the dignity of the people." Here, she talks about making the film, its initial success and her astounding influence on later generations of Venezuelan filmmakers.

More Intelligent Life: From early in your career, the international film community has embraced you. What is it about your point of view that you think resonated so strongly with the people in Cannes?

Margot Benacerraf: "Araya" came at a very important moment: it was the New Wave. In Cannes, it was a wave of new cinema coming, and especially for a little country like Venezuela, it was quite a surprise even for the critics and for the jury and for the festival to see a small woman bring a new voice in cinema, talking of a country in a new way. And it appealed a lot. It was a surprise—everybody saying what a beautiful film, what an astonishing film, it's not an exotic type of tropical film—and this was important. It was a new vision of Latin America.

MIL: You actually call Araya, the region, "a metaphor for Latin America". Can you explain what you meant?

MB: I always said Araya is a metaphor for Latin America because we people in Latin America, we don't have an evolution over a thousand of years [like in Europe]. We just come from a very primitive culture, a very young culture. Araya is in solitude, apart from everything in Venezuela. It is a peninsula in the east of Venezuela and nobody goes there. They are isolated, they lived in a closed world of fish and salt, salt and fish. And then suddenly machines came, and everything was going to change for these people, for these families that have been traditionally working in fishing or in salt mines.

So I just shot the end and the beginning of an era. I had observed there were going to be problems, and it's going to be difficult because of the metaphor we were talking about: how can people pass 500 years in one day? This is my question at the end of this film. What's going to happen from the human point of view, with all these families living in Araya? Is the world going to be transformed because of the machines? Are they going to grow flowers in this arid country where nothing grows? I concluded the film the lazy way—I just wonder and look and say, What is going to happen? I don't know, but I'm afraid.

MIL: Did you run into any difficulties, documenting such an isolated group of people?

MB: As a matter of fact, no. It was such a strange thing. They didn't care to see me going around—it was so strange, a woman running from night to day with a cameraman. And they didn't know really what I was doing, but they started loving me. At certain moments, they forgot about the camera. They did what I asked. This is very important to me, the love I gave and they gave to me in the film. Many times, people ask me what happens with the film that after so many years, people can still watch it and be moved? I say it's because it was made with a lot of love.

MIL: After the critical success of "Araya", why didn't you return to making films?

MB: Three years [after "Araya"] my very good friends in Caracas begged me to be with them in the establishment of the Institute of Culture. And I felt romantic, that I owed it to my country to do something in that sense and help establish it. I said to myself, All right, I'll work one year, two years—and it's not like that when you accept something in a new country where everything had to be done. I made the Cinemateca archives. It was the best Cinemateca for years in all Latin America, and we had such an important... practical school of cinema. I started doing a lot of things on behalf of the Cinemateca and of the arts in general, and so, the years have passed [Laughs]. I said, If I go away right now, everything will fall. I have to go on. And now, a lot of young filmmakers come out of the Venezuela Cinemateca I established. So in a certain sense, when I feel bad about not [making more films], at the same time, all those young people walk up to me and say, Thank you—I went to the Cinemateca.

MIL: Since the Cinemateca opened in 1966, how has the world of Venezuelan film changed?

MB: It's been a regular growth. Unfortunately now we have the dictatorship. And if you are not thinking like the dictator, you are not going to be helped [financially]. It's all about nationalism, heroes, and everything serving Chavez. I feel very bad, because the young people—there are a lot of young people with much talent, and most of them had to do what they are imposed to do. And that's a pity. There are one or two independent people, but that is not enough.

MIL: Do you think your career would be different if "Araya" received a proper wide release 50 years ago?

MB: Maybe yes, maybe it would be different. Because "Araya" was kept like a prestige film, you know? Everybody loved it; every time the film was shown in Paris or anywhere, it was a big success, an artistic success. But there was a never commercial career established for "Araya". Almost like a myth.

See the full schedule of screenings for "Araya"

~ ERIN DEJESUS

Images credit: Milestone Films