alr

Land Without Bread

Directed by Luis Buñuel

Simon of the Desert

Directed by Luis Buñuel
Screening on Film
  • Land Without Bread (Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan)

    Directed by Luis Buñuel.
    Spain, 1933, 35mm, black & white, 28 min.
    In English.
    Kino Video / Photofest

Upon reading an ethnographic study of the poorest district of northern Spain, Las Hurdes, Buñuel decided to film there. The resulting work has remained controversial since its premiere, when it was banned by the Spanish government. Buñuel juxtaposes documentary images of human degradation, often posed or staged, with a voiceover commentary – written by the poet Pierre Unik – that combines travelogue exaggeration with a matter-of-fact recounting of the grim cost of rural poverty. Further, the soundtrack impassively adds music by Brahms and – in English-language versions at least – a flat-voiced reading of the commentary. The combination has led commentators to label the film everything from an impassioned cry of anger to a callous and callow documentary to a Surrealist parody of ethnography. – BG

  • Simon of the Desert ( Simón del desierto)

    Directed by Luis Buñuel.
    With Silvia Pinal, Claudio Brook, Enrique Álvarez Félix.
    1965, 35mm, black & white, 45 min.
    Spanish with English subtitles.

Perched atop a pillar in the middle of the desert in eternal penance for six years, six months, and six days, Simon – inspired by 5th century Saint Simeon Stylites – seeks spiritual purification through this rather spectacular means. Doling out miracles, prophesies, and words of wisdom to his fickle followers, Simon’s encounters elicit a string of blasphemous comedy routines occasionally anticipating those of Monty Python. His faith is ritually tested by the devil who reappears in various feminine incarnations - accounting for most of the matter-of-fact surrealist moments that would become signature late Buñuel. With as ascetic an aesthetic as Simon’s, the last film Buñuel made while exiled in Mexico is a richly compact allegory. The cynical tone – balancing somewhere between mockery and sympathy – is consummated by a whirlwind ending which is as incredulously shocking as it is completely appropriate. – BG

Part of film series

Read more

Buñuel.
The Beginning and the End

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Novo

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada

Read more
a double-exposed image that includes a 16th century Russian man being fed grapes by another amid decadent decor

Wings of a Serf

Read more
a close-up of a Bissau-Guinean woman wearing a scarf on her head and looking directly at the camera with a slight smile

Le Dépays + Sans soleil