Salt for Svanetia
About Salt for Svanetia
In Ushguli, a Svan village cut off by the Caucasus, people make clothes and hats, cut hair, bury the dead, and bring in a harvest during a July snowstorm. Salt does not arrive. Animals lick human sweat and urine. Men coming back from work lower in the valley carry salt and are killed in an avalanche. The film ends with a Soviet road being built into the region. Mikhail Kalatozov directed. The Georgian title is Marili svanets. The Russian title is Sol Svanetii. Intertitles call the village Ushkul.
Cast & crew
More about Salt for Svanetia
Sergei Tretyakov wrote it with Kalatozov, from Tretyakov’s article. Shalva Gegelashvili and Kalatozov photographed it. Viktor Shklovsky edited. Gruziya-film is the distributor named on the English Wikipedia table. That page dates the release November 1931 and times the film at 55 minutes. This record’s year is 1930. Goskino is not the company on those credits. A Commons file uses the Russian title.
Themes
Background
Ushguli was in the Georgian Soviet Republic. The film treats the new road as the answer to a village that could not get salt.
Making
Kalatozov shot the village himself, then cut Tretyakov’s article into a reel that ends on the road crew.
Look
Kalatozov and Shalva Gegelashvili shot the snow harvest, the burials, and the salt.
Preservation
The film survives. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- The salt shortage is the second half. The first half is the work of the year.
- The avalanche kills the men bringing salt, not the villagers waiting.
- The road is the ending the film offers.
- The picture is silent, with Russian intertitles.
Scenes
- The harvest goes on in a July snowstorm.
- Animals lick sweat and urine because there is no salt.
- An avalanche buries the men carrying salt up from the valley.
Influenced by
- Sergei Tretyakov’s article on Svaneti
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1930. Соль Сванетии.webm)
