《阿拉亞》是委內瑞拉傳奇女導演瑪戈·貝納塞拉芙唯一一部紀錄長片，它在拉美影史上佔有相當重要的位置，是委內瑞拉民主後第一部獲得國際聲譽的電影，當年在嘎納它與阿倫·雷奈的《廣島之戀》共同分享了國際評論家獎，也都獲金棕櫚提名卻最終未果，儘管名氣不如《廣島之戀》和《黑人奧菲爾》那麼大，但在專業人士眼中此片一直都是研究拉美女性電影所必修的經典，影片出色的攝影時常被人們所讚美，是與卡拉託佐夫的《我是古巴》齊名的詩意電影傑作，法國著名導演讓·雷諾阿在看過影片後稱讚《阿拉亞》是他所見過最完美的紀錄片之一。貝納塞拉芙就像是委內瑞拉影壇的特呂弗和亨利·朗格魯瓦，她不僅是第一位畢業於巴黎電影學院（IDHEC）的拉美導演，而且在1966年創辦了委內瑞拉電影資料館，雖然由於資金短缺問題，她個人的導演生涯並不順利，作品也很少，但卻為新委內瑞拉電影的發展成立基金會，並曾獲得世界各國的無數榮譽和勳章。 轉自AUESS的博客資料（http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_497f6a250100cxm0.html） Shown at Cannes in 1959, the year after Venezuela's last dictator Marcos Perez-Jimenez was overthrown, the documentary inadvertently highlights the kind of exploitation of the poor that can lead to rebellion. While the dictator escaped to Miami with $13 million, salt workers were piling up mounds of salt on the flat sands, making barely enough money to keep them in arepas and black beans. Between the hot, tropical climate and the sores on their feet, the job these workers do every day is excruciating. Yet the lives of the fishermen and salt workers in this documentary are shown in the context of planned, upscale development, something of a disservice to the larger picture. With not much making a great impression thus far at the Berlinale, Margot Benacerraf's lovely documentary Araya comes as a breath of fresh air from 1959. Reminiscent of Agnes Varda's debut film La Pointe-courte (1954) in its artful but somewhat ambivilant attitude towards filming a local community and their work clearly admired by the filmmakers, Benacerraf's film focuses on the inhabitants of Araya, a desolate area in Venezuela subsiding through a long history on the wealth of its great salt marshes. Araya was originally compared to Flaherty's Man of Aran, Visconti's La Terra Trema (1947) and Rossellini's India (1957). Margot Benacerraf has described the film as "a cinematic narration based on script writing rather than a spontaneous action, a feature documentary, the opposite of Italian neorealism".
