When Peaceful Protest Is Treated as a Threat

932 reactions · 30 comments | A seminal film in the canon of surrealist cinema, Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) is a 1929 French silent short film directed by Luis Buñuel, and written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. The film has no plot in the conventional sense. It unfolds through dream logic and Freudian free association. The screenplay was based on two dreams shared by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. At the time, Buñuel was working in France as an assistant director to Jean Epstein. One day, he told Dalí about a dream in which a cloud sliced the moon “like a razor blade through an eye.” Dalí replied that he had dreamed of a hand crawling with ants. “There’s the film — let’s go and make it,” Buñuel declared. The script was written in just a few days. Buñuel made clear throughout his writings that, between Dalí and himself, the only rule for the writing of the script was: “No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” He also stated: “Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis.” For years, the animal used in the infamous eye-slicing scene was disputed. Buñuel later confirmed it was a calf’s eye. Through the use of intense lighting and bleaching of the calf’s skin, he attempted to make the dead animal’s furry face look more like human skin. The first screening of the film took place at Studio des Ursulines. Notable attendees of the première included Pablo Picasso, Le Corbusier, Jean Cocteau, Christian Bérard and Georges Auric, in addition to the entirety of André Breton’s Surrealist group. The audience’s positive reception of the film amazed Buñuel, who was relieved that no violence ensued. Dalí, on the contrary, was reportedly disappointed, feeling that the audience’s reaction made the evening “less exciting”. Buñuel later claimed that prior to the show, he had put stones in his pockets “to throw at the audience in case of disaster.” #art #artist #cinema #surrealism | Artist Flame