Valley residents have never shied away from political activism. Issues of equality, discrimination, and civil liberty — and the many protests, marches, and rallies that often come with those issues — have always found a wealth of open hearts and open ears here.
But the Valley is also a place filled with art lovers. Turn the pages of this paper and you’ll find world-class offerings in music, museum exhibitions, and more. This week, a special screening at Amherst Cinema brings those two worlds together.
Salt of the Earth, screening Saturday afternoon as part of the Film School in 60 Minutes — more on that series in a moment — is Herbert J. Biberman’s 1954 feature based on the lives of Mexican-American workers at New Mexico’s Empire Zinc mine. On strike to protest unsafe working conditions and wage disparity (the white workers are paid more), the men of the mine are forced to put down their picket signs when an injunction is handed down. But in an unexpected turn, the women of the mine community take up the cause while the men stay home.
For today’s crowds, there’s a lot to unpack here: racial discrimination, economic injustice, gender bias, and much more. And when you dig into the history of the film itself, it turns out to be a prime example of some of our government’s more aggressive attempts at suppression. Made at the height of the McCarthy era by three blacklisted filmmakers, Salt of the Earth became the only film suppressed by the federal government at every stage. As part of the Film School program (12 p.m.; separate ticket), film historian Nina Kleinberg will discuss the arduous journey the film had to undertake to reach an audience.
At over six decades old, the film does a good job at feeling relevant today (whether that is a good thing depends, perhaps, on whether you look at it as a film lover or an activist). And in the end, the blacklisted bunch get to have the last laugh: in 1992, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the national Film Registry. For today’s audience of artists and activists, this is a rare chance to catch a piece of history on the big screen.
Also this week: The End of the Tour is director James Ponsoldt’s (The Spectacular Now) take on an epic five-day interview between Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) and acclaimed “big book” novelist David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel). In an odd twist, the interview — which took place just after the publication of Wallace’s neutron bomb of a novel Infinite Jest — was never published. Lipsky stored the tapes but never saw Wallace again; he wrote the memoir this story draws from in the aftermath of Wallace’s 2008 suicide. Wallace’s writing is a tricky read that demands commitment; one suspects that many people are more aware of his name than his actual work. For those intimidated by the thought of picking up a thousand-page novel, Ponsoldt’s film can give you a look into the mind of the man who created it.
To end on a lighter note: Ross McElwee’s inimitable documentary Sherman’s March gets a rare screening this weekend up in Shelburne Falls. Showing Friday and Saturday evening at the town’s Memorial Hall, the film sets out to describe the lingering effects of Sherman’s march of Southern destruction during the Civil War, but McElwee finds himself continuously sidetracked by his own demons and pet obsessions, to hilariously charming effect.•
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
