Aurora Film Society Presents: Salt Of The Earth

General Admission tickets: $10.00

06:30pm Doors

07:00pm Show Time!

All tickets sales are considered a donation to The Aurora Film society and The Fox Valley Music foundation.

About the Film:

Salt Of The Earth [1954 / Herbert J Biberman / 94 minutes]

Salt of the Earth is a dramatization of a real labor union strike in New Mexico, made by a handful of blacklisted actors and filmmakers with the cast rounded out by actual miners. Along the way, the filmmakers had to contend with the locals sabotaging their shoots, labs refusing to process their film, pushback from the cast about the script, and the lead actress getting deported. It wasn’t screened anywhere in the US upon its release since the projectionists’ union refused to run it. (On the other hand, it is the only American film to be screened in China during Mao Tse-Tung’s time in office.)

The film was inspired by an actual strike that took place in a mine in New Mexico where Latinx miners were being treated quite differently from the Anglo ones. Their pay was lower, they had separate locker rooms and canteens, their facilities were sub-standard. Their wives were also complaining that the company housing provided to the Latinx workers had no indoor plumbing. In the film, much of this is dramatized through its impact on one family – Ramon and Esperanza Quintero, and their three kids.

Ramon doesn’t want Esperanza to show up by the picket line with the other women when the men go on strike; he only relents when he learns that none of the other women make coffee as well as she can. Esperanza comes to relish being part of the movement – so much so that when the factory files an injunction ordering that any striking miners would be arrested immediately, she’s one of a small group of women pointing out that the injunction says nothing about arresting miners’ wives if they start a picket line. Which they’d be happy to do.

The Aurora Film Society

Since 2018, the Aurora Film Society (AFS) has been broadening our community’s collective horizons by screening great movies together. For $60 a year, our subscribers are shown 12 carefully selected & curated movies, works that are historically important & groundbreaking, works that provide a window into far-flung cultures, works that are sometimes overlooked or unavailable to most audiences. The AFS puts a special emphasis on showing the sorts of luminous & idiosyncratic stories from beyond the mainstream that people of the Fox Valley area would normally not have a chance to see in a theatrical setting. We screen every third Wednesday of the month at The Venue.
For questions and/or to subscribe, please email aurorafilmsociety@gmail.com
To see our current schedule & past movies, visit aurorafilmsociety.org

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