Rare Luis Buñuel Photographs on View at the Spanish Film Library

Written by Manuel Echeverría Monday, 26 March 2012 22:48

MADRID - Luis Buñuel is, without a doubt, one of the best known movie directors. A lot has been written about him and many exhibitions on him have been organized. But, there are some aspects of his works that are not known, and we have not resisted temptation to show some of these. In the archives of the Spanish Film Library, there is a collection of photographs made by him when he was looking for exterior locations for the films he made in Mexico and the organizers wanted to show this work that illustrates the work he did prior to making a movie, and that also shows us another face of Buñuel.
Now that the 25th anniversary of his death will be celebrated it has been thought to make an homage and that a good way to this is by showing this part of his life that has never before been seen. Buñuel arrived in Mexico in 1946, almost by chance, alter having passes a series of tribulations, and at a moment in which he was without work, without a country, Mexico offered him a home and work, which allowed him to make the films we now know. He installed himself until his death in 1983. Between 1947 and 1965 he shot 20 movies in Mexico.

 Of these twenty, the curators of the exhibit have found in the archives, photographs of locations of twelve of them. It is logical not to have photos of locations of some of them, be it because they were shot in interiors as was the case of Gran Casino 1 (1947, at Clasa film studio) or Don Quintin The Bitter (1951, at the Tepeyac film studios) or other cases such as it is supposed that being exteriors known to him, he didn´t need to fix the shots in a photograph. For example, Robinson Crusoe, (1952) was filmed in the beaches of Manzanillo, where the curators have not found any photographs; given the time that has elapsed since they were taken and the different routes the photographs took before getting to the library it is very possible that they might have been lost.

Visit The Spanish Film Library at : en.www.mcu.es/cine/CE/Filmoteca/Filmoteca.html

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~