Person
Buñuel, Luis (1900-1983)Other forms
1900-02-22 - 1983-07-29
Luis Buñuel was a Spanish scriptwriter and film director, father of the cinematographic surrealism. Buñuel was born in Calanda but moved to Madrid in 1917 in order to study. He settled in the student's residence, where he entered the intelectual world and met Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez y Rafael Albert, among other outstanding people. He began interesting in dadaism and Louis Aragon and André Bretón's work. These people made him to go to Paris when he finished his studies so he could attend intelectual and surrealist movement chats. When Bueñuel watched a Fritz Lang's movie, "Destiny" (1921), he decided to work in the cinema industry. He also met his wife in Paris, Jeanne Rucar, who he got married and had two sons with: Juan Luis and Rafael. He began working in cinema as director assistant of Jean Epstein, and made his first short film with Salvador Dalí: "An Andalusian Dog" (1929). From that moment, he was admitted inside the surrealist group, along with Max Ernst, André Breton, Tristan Tzara, Magritte and Louis Aragon.
In 1930, Buñuel went to Hollywood, hired by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in order to know and learn the production system they worked with. He met there the famous Charles Chaplin and Serguéi Eisenstein. In 1931, when the Spanish Second Republic was about to be proclaimed, he went back to Spain and continued making movies and travelling to Paris. He was hired by Paramount as dubbing director in Spain. When the Spanish Civil War started, he was forced to leave the country and moved to Geneva and Paris. He went back to Hollywood in 1938 and developed his career in Mexico and Paris at the same time. He went to Spain in 1970 and filmed "Tristana" (1970). He kept going to Spain until the eighties. He died in Mexico in 1983.
Due to the originality of his movies and to the critics, he recieved many awards and nominations. He won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972), also nominated to the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and with "That Obscure Object of Desire" (1977) he was nominated to another Oscar for Best Writing Adapted Screenplay.
Date of the event: 1936 - 1939