Buñuel and Surrealism: Revolt Into Love

Luis Buñuel: Aesthetics of the Irrational

In this commissioned video essay, filmmaker and academic Cristina Álvarez López explores the distinctive cinematic experiments that first announced Buñuel’s provocative filmmaking to the world.

Emerging from the core of the Surrealist movement of 1930s Paris, collaborating closely with Salvador Dalí, this period saw Buñuel produce essential works of early cinema whose iconic images remain both startling and deeply original.

Approaching these films in a fittingly poetic manner, López decodes their images to understand the classic Surrealist ideas of revolution and mad love; passionate and explosive elements which this essay film interprets beneath the sounds of ancient drumming rituals from Buñuel's Spanish hometown of Calanda.

Tagged with: Luis Buñuel, Essay Films