FATHER OF SURREALIST CINEMA ON SHOW IN SYDNEY

An exhibition of photographs never before seen in Australia from the personal collection of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel will be presented at Customs House, Sydney in May as part of the 12th Spanish Film Festival.

BUÑUEL: AMIGOS Y PELICULAS (Friends and Family) consists of 30 photographs, six posters, letters and moving images: it is a tribute to the 25th anniversary of Buñuel’s death last year and is part of the collection at the Centro Buñuel de Calanda in Spain.

Considered one of the most important directors in the history of cinema, Buñuel was born in Calanda, Spain in 1900, and also worked and lived in France, the USA and Mexico. Buñuel enjoyed a career as diverse and contradictory as his films. and his style has had an enormous influence on filmmakers, prompting Alfred Hitchcock to call him “the best director ever”.

The black and white photographs show the importance of his friends, including Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca, as well as his career milestones (awards at the Cannes Film Festival for Los Olvidados and the Venice Film Festival for Belle de Jour).

The images illustrate his sense of the bizarre and his interest in breaking social conventions. Ever the showman, we see him in school plays, on location, in cameo appearances and even dressed as a nun!

The audio-visual component includes film clips and insights and anecdotes about each of his 32 films: taking a stand from a poetic-moral point of view in Un Chien Andalou, describing one of his favourites – Nazarin, and the scandal and subsequent banning of Viridiana in Spain.

Venue: Customs House, 31 Alfred Street, Circular Quay (Ground Floor & Level 2)
Dates: 28 April until 30 May 2009
FREE

BUÑUEL: AMIGOS Y PELICULAS is part of the Luis Buñuel Retrospective which comprises 10 of his best-known films and will be presented in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/customshouse/

Tags: BUÑUEL: AMIGOS Y PELICULAS, Luis Buñuel, Spanish Film Festival