xREL.v3

SfX

Salt of the Earth

Ripper......: VH-PROD         Length.........: 92 MiN
Source......: DVD             Aspect Ratio...: 1.33:1
Type........: XviD            Resolution.....: 512x384
Disks.......: [x]1CD [ ]2CD
Rars........: 15x50MB         Video Bitrate..: 956 kb/s
Video Framerate: 23.976
VH-PROD Rls.: 07/18/04        Audio Bitrate..: 75 kb/s
DVD Release.: 03/30/99        Audio Language.: English
Theater Date: 03/14/54        Stream Type....: [x]Mp3 [ ]Ac3
Channels.......: [ ]Stereo
IMDB Rating.: 7.8/10                           [x]Mono
IMDB Votes..: 286
Genre.......: [ ] Action      Subtitles......: [ ] English
Comedy   [x] Drama        [ ] French      [ ] Spanish
Romance  [ ] Family       [ ] Chinese     [ ] Japanese
Sci-Fi   [ ] Musical      [ ] Thai        [ ] Hindi
Horror   [ ] Fantasy      [ ] German      [ ] Dutch
War      [ ] Crime        [ ] Portuguese  [x] None
Documentary

IMDB Link: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0047443/

P L O T

Based on an actual strike against the Empire Zinc Mine
in New Mexico, the film deals with the prejudice
against the Mexican-American workers, who struck to
attain wage parity with Anglo workers in other mines
and to be treated with dignity by the bosses. The film
is an early treatment of feminism, because the wives
of the miners play a pivotal role in the strike,
against their husbands wishes.

C A S T

Rosaura Revueltas  ....    Esperanza Quintero
Will Geer                ....    Sheriff
David Wolfe        ....    Barton
Mervin Williams    ....    Hartwell
David Sarvis       ....    Alexander
Juan Chac n        ....    Ramon Quintero
Henrietta Williams ....    Teresa Vidal
Ernesto Vel zquez  ....    Charley Vidal
Angela S nchez     ....    Consuelo Ruiz
Joe T. Morales     ....    Sal Ruiz
Clorinda Alderette ....    Luz Morales
Charles Coleman    ....    Antonio Morales
Virginia Jencks    ....    Ruth Barnes

R E L E A S E  N O T E S

Background

SALT OF THE EARTH was added to the Library of Congress
National Film Registry in 1992. The film was sponsored by
the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
When SALT OF THE EARTH was first released, it was
considered to be a propaganda film in favor of communism.
Some of its makers faced a McCarthy-era Congress, and its
director served time in jail.

Salt of the Earth was the only blacklisted film ever in
American film history. It was blacklisted during the
1950s during the height of the Cold War scare.

Ripper Notes

There were two DVD releases for this film:

Studio: Pioneer Video
DVD Release Date: March 30, 1999

Studio: Gotham Distribution
DVD Release Date: May 25, 2004

The "newer" Gotham Distribution release appears to have
been mastered from a VHS source. The older release by
Pioneer Video is digitally enhanced, but harder to locate
since it was discontinued
( see http://hometheaterinfo.com/discontinued_s-t.htm ).

We obtained both versions, and included a screenshot
comparing the video quality. Obviously, we used the
Pioneer Video dvd for the rip.

As an added bonus, the Pioneer DVD contained a theatrical
trailer and the short documentary "The Hollywood Ten".

The documentary is about the ten filmmakers who defied
the HUAC, resulting in their imprisonment and blacklisting.

We included both the trailer and the documentary as
extras on the release.

As a matter of interest, the Pioneer DVD does contain
a mastering error at the 56min mark (perhaps one of the
reasons it was discontinued). Although PowerDVD has no
problems decoding through the error, it creates a major
problem when encoding thru Avisynth ( access violation ).

Thanks to some fancy tweaking of the .d2v and encoding the
scene in question separately, we were finally able to
encode the movie in its entirety.

The error can be seen in both the xvid sample (frames 1143
thru 1446) and the included vobsample.

Enjoy! :D