The film focuses on the Las Hurdes region of Spain, the mountainous area around the town of La Alberca, and the intense poverty of its occupants, who were so backwards and isolated that bread was unknown. A main source of income for them was taking in orphan children, for whom they received a government subsidy. Buñuel, who made the film after reading the ethnographic study Las Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine (1927) by Maurice Legendre, took a Surrealist approach to the notion of the anthropological expedition. The result was a travelogue in which the narrator’s extreme (indeed, exaggerated) descriptions of human misery of Las Hurdes contrasted with his flat and uninterested manner.
Spain, 1933, 30 min, French with bulgarian subtitles
Director: Luis Buñuel
Scriptwriter: Luis Buñuel, Rafael Sánchez Ventura, Pierre Unik
DOP: Eli Lotar
Music: Darius Milhaud, Johannes Brahms
Production: Ramón Acín, Luis Buñuel
Director’s Biography:
Luis Buñuel Portolés (22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish and Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians and directors to be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Buñuel’s works were known for their avant-garde surrealism which were also infused with political commentary.