Past screening

The Life and Times Don Luis Buñuel

Directed by: Anthony Wall
Runtime: 1hr 38min Year: 1984

Details

Directed by: Anthony Wall
Runtime: 1hr 38min Year: 1984
Country: United Kingdom
Last Screened: Sun 5th Jul 2015

Made a year after Luis Bunuel's death in 1983 this classic and rarely seen doc presents an illuminating portrait of perhaps the most surreal and visionary director of all time.

**Anthony Wall, Director of the film and Executive Producer of the BBC’s flagship arts documentary strand Arena will introduce the film on Sunday 17.30

The Life and Times Don Luis Buñuel features clips, archival interviews, and commentary from scholars and contemporaries including Catherine Deneuve, Fernando Rey, and Jeanne Moreau.

When Luis Buñuel died aged 83, his obituary in the New York Times called him “an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later”. Often associated with the surrealist movement of the 20s, Buñuel created films that spanned two continents, three languages, and nearly every film genre. Despite this variety, filmmaker John Huston believed that, a Buñuel film is so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable, or, as Ingmar Bergman put it, “Buñuel nearly always made Buñuel films”.

From eye-ball slicing to his plans for deathbed pranks to be played on his family and friends this classic and rarely seen doc is not to be missed.