OPTION OF MEETING UP IN A LOCAL BAR-CAFE CLOSE BY AT 6 PM--- OR MEET AT THE AGO IN FOYER AT 6.55. FILL OUT YOUR PROFILE TRAVEL MATCH FORM. ANY MEMBERS INTERESTED IN JOINING THIS EVENT ARE WELCOME TO SUGGEST THE LOCATION. AFTER THE FILM WE CAN GO FOR A DRINK AND GET A BITE TO EAT (IF THERE IS ANY INTEREST) ONCE YOU HAVE RSVP YES. I WILL CONTACT YOU WITH THE FINAL DETAILS. EVENT PRICE IS $10.90 Plus $2 CNIB Donation ARAYA (black $ white) NEW 35MM RESTORATION & TORONTO PREMIERE! "Wonderfully restored… I can compare the film only to Luchino Visconti's great La Terra Trema for its combination of extraordinary beauty, outraged social conscience and almost mythic grandeur... The experience was stunning in 1959. It's every bit as stunning today" (Stuart Klawans, The Nation). One of the most beautiful restorations of 2009 made from the original camera negative, Araya is Margot Benacerraf’s 1959 Cannes prize-winning cine-tone poem to the salt harvesters in the Araya lagoon in the northeastern part of Venezuela. A centuries-old tradition, the salt mines in Araya (a now extinct region) are shimmering pyramids that jut up from the stubbornly infertile landscape, glistening like crystals through the film’s gorgeous, high-contrast, black-and-white photography. Employing a style somewhere between Joris Ivens and Marguerite Duras, the film luxuriates in the setting’s barren beauty while witnessing the toil of survival amid the poverty and injustice of the region’s fishing and salt industries. Inspired by Eisenstein’s ¡Que Viva Mexico!, Araya is a curious mix of ethnography, lyricism and incantatory poetry, which yields a captivating tension between social commentary and the politics of representation. An inherent eroticism comes to the fore as sweaty, sculpted torsos slog in the hot sun—a burning metaphor for the swelling revolution about to explode in Venezuela. "Majestic….Arresting....Overwhelming beauty!" (Richard Brody, New Yorker Magazine). Director: Margot Benacerraf Year: 1959 Runtime: 82 minutes Country: Venezuela/France Screening Times: March 6, 2010 7:00 PM Screens at Jackman Hall Rated PG.