لوئیس بونوئل

Luis Buñuel

Surrealist film director. He was born in Calanda, in Aragón province. When 17, he moved to Madrid to study history at university. He entered the student's residency, where he later met Salvador Dalí and Federico Garcia Lorca. After finishing his studies, he moved to Paris, where he learned how to direct films from French silent cinema masters.

Influenced by Fritz Lang, he decided to direct his own films. By this time he was also influenced by Surrealism and the Marquis de Sade.

Dalí wrote a script for a very shocking film, 'Un chien andalou', that was quite an event in french intellectual world. This success got the attention from vicount Charles Noialles, very intersted in arts, who paid his next film: l'Age d'or. This film was a big scandal, being first censored and then forbbiden for almost 50 years. After contacting with Hollywood companies, he started working in France for them. When the spanish civil war started, he supported the repulican government. But before second world war started, he moved to New York.

In the States he started to work in the cinema section from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa). An autobiographical writing by Dalí made him out because he commented that Buñuel was an atheist and a communist. Later he moved to México

In México, in the 1940s, after meeting an actress from his first films in a dinner, he could start directing mainstream films. By this way, he could enter in the mexican film industry and after a while, he could start working in other films more accurated to his own interests and themes. His peak in Mexico was "El Ángel exterminador", released in 1962.

When his return to France, in the mid of the 1960s, he started his most brillant period. Films like 'Belle de jour' and 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie' are between his best works.

He died in Mexico DF in July 29th, in the year 1983, when he was 83 years old.

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