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Javier Espada Presents Buñuel, un cineasta surrealista

Andrea Mora

As part of the international premieres that the 19th Morelia International Film Festival (FICM) brings this edition, the documentary Buñuel, un cineasta surrealista (2021) by Spanish director Javier Espada was screened. Room three of Cinépolis Centro was attended by Daniela Michel, founder and general director of the festival, Ivan Trujillo, director of TV UNAM, and the director of the film.

The documentary was screened at the most recent edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Buñuel, un cineasta surrealista investigates the life of the Spanish director Luis Buñuel, the forerunner of surrealist cinema, in the way in which he incorporated his obsessions, his vision of the world, his childhood and youth memories into his cinematographic work.

Before talking about his film, Javier Espada thanked the Morelia Festival, which he defined as "A nursery of ideas, a meeting point for people who love cinema."

The Spanish director and researcher mentioned that the documentary was born from a conference he gave, which presented a creative challenge, but also a documentation challenge. Espada worked for more than two months on the restoration of photographs from Buñuel's childhood.

His intention with this work is to invite the viewer to return to the cinema of the director of Los olvidados  (1950), because "not everything is told." Although he achieved his intention to expose the relationship between Buñuel's cinematographic work and literature - an aspect often ignored - many other things were left out, since it is impossible to say everything. Buñuel, un cineasta surrealista, is the result of years of research and also the opinion of the director, which is why his voice narrates the documentary.

Espada himself defines his work as a non-fiction film. He even sees this work as a way to close a cycle that arose with his first work about the filmmaker, El último guion, Buñuel en la memoria of 2008.