Salt of the Earth (1954)
The blacklisted Salt of the Earth (1954) represents the strike of a group of mostly Mexican miners in 1940s New Mexico. This scene dramatizes a bilingual, gender-integrated public meeting where women from the community argue that they should take over the strike from the men. Salt attempts to represent an “intersectional” social setting where relations of race, class, and gender overlap, and the filmmakers here used the conventions of Hollywood editing and shot composition, alternating between individuals and larger groups in order to represent such spaces of audience and union formation.
In 1971, at a union meeting devoted to UFW film projects, Chavez singled it out as an example of the kind of work to emulate, “a movie showing workers being prepared for [a] strike, ready for [a] strike, showing [the] responsibility of organization.”
| Previous page on path | UFW VHS, page 2 of 7 | Next page on path |
Discussion of "Salt of the Earth (1954)"
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...