Father, son reunite over filming of documentary

AUSTIN - Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado has traveled the world over to shoot stark images of man's inhumanity to man, environmental catastrophe and even an occasional glimmer of hope. Now he's the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary, co-directed by his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, and the New German Cinema master Wim Wenders. The Salt of the Earth opens Friday in Dallas.

It's a breathtaking, deeply humanistic film, hard to watch at times but deeply rewarding. It also brought about a detente and eventual understanding between a father and son who had grown apart. We talked with the younger Salgado last month at the SXSW Film Festival, where The Salt of the Earth screened.

Had you wanted to work with your dad before this film?

To be honest with you, no. My dad and I had a terrible relationship when we started the film, and I was very scared to be close to him for too long. Things always started to go wrong somehow. Then we went to visit the Zo'é people [an indigenous Brazilian tribe]. I didn't want to go. I was afraid it would be like a Werner Herzog-Klaus Kinski kind of situation. That's how we were. But the Zo'é are so nice that their niceness contaminated us. So we behaved, and I filmed him.

Is that what brought you back together?

No. When we got back I edited those images and showed that to him. As we say in the film, a photograph tells a lot more about the person who is making the photo than the person on the other side. When Sebastião saw how his son saw him, he was so touched. Suddenly he couldn't speak anymore, and his eyes became very shiny. This gave me the certainty that this was a good time to keep on doing this and make a film and try to be closer to him and solve our problems.

How did Wim Wenders get involved?

There was this guy around who had just met my dad. They were soccer friends; they watched football together and teased each other about their favorite teams. This guy happened to be one of the greatest filmmakers in the world. So I spoke with Wim and told him about my intuition, that Sebastião's story would make a great film. He had the same intuition, and that's what started it.

How do you get along with your dad now?

It's amazing that making this film has sorted things out for us. I saw Wim's rushes, footage filmed by somebody else, and that really touched me. I saw the toll Sebastião paid to do what he did, how much he learned. And we became friends. The crazy realization is that I was the problem in our relationship. I was holding a grudge against him for being so far away working when I was young. Then I understood, and that was enough.