THE WHITE TREASURE and the salt workers from Caquena

Synopsis

White Treasure shows that even green technologies have their social and organic costs. The film opens with a car show, presenting electric cars and hybrid vehicles- the future of transportation. They will not need oil or emit greenhouse gasses, but their new, more powerful batteries, require different raw materials, such as lithium. In the next shot, the director takes us to Bolivia, where the world's largest deposits of this element are found in a huge salt lake – the white treasure of the Salar de Uyuni. Beautiful, otherworldly landscape over 3600 m above sea level, blinding brightness, white salt, and water are separated from the azure sky by a band of mountains visible in the distance. In the salt lake the indigenous residents of nearby villages, the Aymara Indians, toil to extract salt as they have for generations. They do alright without the new lithium battery technology – or computers, cell phones and cars. They have their own customs, traditions, church, school and grazing llamas. Director Katharina Bühler shows us the world just before the arrival of the bulldozers, large corporations, throngs of people and other "benefits" of civilization. It allows us to delight in the knowledge that at any moment everything is likely to change and disappear. (fg, WatchDOCS)

"I believe the Gringos have begun with the lithium over there." Don Rosauro is standing in the middle of an endless white desert pointing out a black spot at the horizon.
He's a salt worker at Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. For generations the dependants of the Aymara Indians have been mining salt here, in the world's largest salt desert, 3.670 meters above sea level.
Since it has become known that Salar de Uyuni holds the worlds's biggest amount of lithium - THE future's resource - their little village finds itself in a place where global interest is reaching in.
This documentary carefully joins two generations: 14-year old Daniel and his friends at school, in the village with their fathers, mining salt out in the lake and while discovering first signs of future changes. In a close portrait 'THE WHITE TREASURE and the salt workers from Caquena' describes the silence before a storm, a culture at the dawn of globalization.
“What do you make out of lithium? How is all this going to be?” the major's wife asks and raises her eyes towards future.

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Festivals/awards

2011 International Women's Filmfestival Dortmund/ Cologne - Best Cinematography Award
2011 International Women's Filmfestival Dortmund/ Cologne - Best Cinematography Award
2011 DOK Leipzig
2012 Watch DOCS Poland

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