Luis Buñuel and Las Hurdes. An essay in provocative human geographies

Abstract

The work develops a reflection on the documentary by Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) entitled Las Hurdes (1933) and filmed in the community that bears the same name. The objectives of the essay consist of showing what were the ideological, aesthetic, political and ethical motivations that led the Spanish director to film this documentary, giving an account of the historical context that Spain lived, just three years after the start of the civil war (1936) that would culminate with the enthronement of Franco in power in 1939, under a fascist regime, characterized by persecution, censorship, intolerance, exile and state crime. For this, historical sources of a properly historiographical, cinematographic, journalistic and literary will be reviewed, being the perspective more sociological than aesthetic. It describes through those who were his closest collaborators, scholars of his work, Spanish cinema and the history of world cinematography, and his autobiography Mi último suspiro (1982), the vicissitudes he had to face and overcome. to film this documentary (between April 23 and May 22, 1933), and how it was received inside and outside Spain in those troubled times when Europe was disputed by fascism, sovietism and republican anarchism, in sources closer to our time, especially of a journalistic and historical nature about the seventh art.

Las Hurdes

Luis Buñuel

Documental

Civil War

Franquismo

Spain