SALT IN THE AIR
“Salt reminds us of pain and the bitter smell and taste of happiness.”
- Oleh Lysheha, poet
Watch on YouTube
Watch on Vimeo
The Princess and the Salt Mine (animation)
A portrait of rural melancholia, SALT IN THE AIR exhumes the spirit of salt from a 3,500-year-old salt mine in a foggy and hardscrabble Carpathian Mountain village. With rhythmic pacing and intimacy, SALT IN THE AIR connects actual salt with the landscapes and the lives that salt touches. Innovative asthma clinics where patients inhale salt crystals. The enduring legacy of salt pork. And the salt-miners’ struggle to sustain a solemn covenant with what was once the most valuable material on Earth.
The film's elegiac and reflective style reveals the stories of salt miners, mine engineers, doctors, asthma patients and town residents. The salt is so pure that inhaling it can virtually cure asthma in children. Salt is at once highly valuable resource for this poor community and a fundamental part of the Ukrainian cuisine in the form of salo, a special kind of salt pork often enjoyed raw.
SALT IN THE AIR presents salt as an archetypal substance that retains an aura of mystery due to its transformative nature. The Ukrainian poet Oleh Lysheha represents this point of view in the film when he says, “Salt… reminds us of pain and the bitter smell and taste of happiness.” In alchemical philosophy, salt was considered a very powerful element, equal to life itself and a correlate of the soul. Salt presents us with a visceral example of our dependence on the Earth and is akin to air and water in that it is the Earth made palatable.
CREW
Enrico Rossini Cullen ...................................... DIRECTOR
Lesya Kalynska .................................................. PRODUCER
Andrej Yakovlev .............................................. DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
SCREENINGS
Wednesday, July 9, 2014. Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge.
Friday, November 7, 2014. Inverness Film Festival, Scotland.
Saturday, November 1, 2014. 5:00 p.m. Shevchenko Scientific Society, New York City.
Saturday, April 19, 2014. 4:15 p.m. MSPIFF - Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. St. Anthony Main Theater.
Friday, April 18, 2014. 5:00 p.m. MSPIFF - Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival. St. Anthony Main Theater.
Sunday, December 15, 2013. 5:00 p.m. American Independence Film Festival. Cinemateque Hall, Theater Kiev, Ukraine. Official Selection.
Sunday, November 24, 2013. 12:05 p.m. Planet in Focus Film Festival. Art Gallery of Toronto. Official Selection.
Saturday, August 24, 2013. 5:00 p.m. KinoLev Film Festival. Lviv, Ukraine. Official Selection.