My Name is Salt
classified U SPlease note: This was screened in March 2015
Winner of the Best Documentary award at last year's Edinburgh Film Festival, this strikingly beautiful debut from Farida Pacha boldly heads out into the vast saline flatlands of the Indian desert to patiently observe the intense work done by a family of salt pan workers. The desert extends endlessly. There is not a tree, blade of grass or rock to be found. But there is one thing lying just beneath the baked surface of the earth that is in huge abundance: salt.
Welcome to Little Rann of Kutch, 5,000 square kilometers of saline desert in Gujarat, India. Every year, just after the monsoon season has finished, thousands of families travel here to spend eight months of the year, without water, electricity or provisions to scrape out a living from this most desolate landscape by laboriously harvesting salt. Following one family over the course of one season as they attempt this seemingly impossible task, this exquisite, lyrical film poignantly observes the very particular rhythms of their lives. Documenting the painstaking, manual techniques used by generations before them, there is a beautiful stoicism in this portrayal of what is a quite extraordinary world.
Ticket prices: Screenings before 16:00: £5.50 full / £4.00 concessions. Screenings after 16:00: £8.00 full / £6.50 concessions.