Cinema
El milagro de la sal
Luis Moya Sarmiento · 1958
Synopsis
A film built around a place: the cathedral carved into the Zipaquirá salt mine, inaugurated a few years earlier, and the work of those who go down to cut the salt there. Reconstruction and footage shot on location alternate, and the narrative is as much melodrama as social inquiry.
Context
Released in 1958, in the lull that follows the failure of the two films of 1955 and precedes the attempts of the sixties. Histories of Colombian cinema group it, with one of those two films, among the first attempts to build an aesthetic of its own and to treat the country's own subjects rather than imitate Mexican comedies. It was presented as an edifying work and had a limited release. The place it films was then new: the salt cathedral had opened in 1954 in a working mine.
Who it is for
A 1958 feature film, in Spanish. The place carries the film more than the story does; it shows a mine and an underground church.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize at the San Sebastián festival, and counted among the country's first films to seek a form of its own rather than a foreign model to imitate.