Buñuel, Dalí and the Andalusian Beasts

Lecture in Spanish

Agustín Sánchez Vidal, professor of the History of Cinema at the Universidad de Zaragoza, is a leading expert on Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. He had a close relationship with Buñuel during the filmmaker’s lifetime, spending time at his home in Mexico. The outcome of this was a number of essays which are now considered essential reference material for studying the work of the filmmaker. His book Buñuel, Lorca, Dalí, el enigma sin fin (Buñuel, Lorca, Dalí, the Endless Enigma) won the Espejo de España essay prize in 1988. He was recently awarded the Premio Primavera de Novela, for Nudo de Sangre (Blood Knot), his second piece of fiction.

Sánchez Vidal lectured on some of the conclusions he has reached on the fascinating artistic relationship between Buñuel and Dalí, which led to creations such as the short film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), which will be screened after the talk. This Surrealist masterpiece, produced in 1929, begins with the famous scene in which a woman’s eye is slit open. Above and beyond its initial, provocative, impact - the purpose of which was to make free-association easier thereafter - the film is a poem in images. It tells us of desires, repression, rebellion and obsession, using a visual language that is closer to dreams than to the imposed order of rational thought.

This talk coincides with the exhibition Beyond Painting. Max Ernst in the Würth Collection, which is devoted to another of the great Surrealist masters who, like Buñuel and Dalí, produced an extraordinary and unsettling body of work.

With the collaboration of the Filmoteca Nacional.