Course Meeting Times
Seminars: 2 sessions / week, 2 hours / session
Prerequisites
The prerequisite for this course is one intermediate Spanish subject. Usually the readings for the class were in both Spanish and English, but student writing and class discussions were exclusively in Spanish.
Syllabus Archive
Films
Students view one feature-length, or at most, one feature-length and one short film per week by Spanish film director Luis Buñuel, that is, 13 out of Buñuel’s total production of 32 films. The course includes roughly two and a half hours per week of discussion about the films and related web materials and printed texts, including film criticism and the director’s autobiography Mi último suspiro. The subject considers films spanning Buñuel’s entire career, from his earliest silent surrealist classic of 1929 to his last film,Cet Obscur object du désir (Ese oscuro objeto del deseo, 1977), although it pays special attention to his Mexican period and the three films he made in Spain.
The subject also explores Buñuel’s early friendship with painter Salvador Dalí and poet Federico García Lorca, surrealist aesthetics, the influence in his films of Freud’s ideas on dreams and sexuality, his corrosive criticism of bourgeois society and the Catholic church, and allusions to European painting (i.e. Dalí, Vermeer, Ribera, Millet) in his cinematic images. Historical contextualization will be provided for each film discussed.
Required Books
Buñuel, Luis. Mi último suspiro. Debolsillo, 2012. ISBN: 9788499894447.
Evans, Peter. The Films of Luis Buñuel: Subjectivity and Desire. Clarendon Press, 1995. ISBN: 9780198159063.
Edwards, Gwynne. The Discreet Art of Luis Buñuel: A Reading of His Films. Marion Boyars, 2000. ISBN: 9780714528328.
Determination of Final Grade
| ACTIVITIES | PERCENTAGES |
|---|---|
| Attendance and quantity and quality of active participation in class discussions | 40% |
| Written notes on Mí último suspiro | 5% |
| First oral (student group) report | 10% |
| 750 word essay on scene from film | 10% |
| Oral report on 10 page paper | 10% |
| 10 page paper | 25% |
