I was born in Calanda, a few streets away from the house where Luis Buñuel – Don Luis – was born. I have always lived with his absent presence, with his hoarse voice filling many spaces that needed certain answers, with his omnipresent cinema opening paths and questions not infrequently without arrival and without resolution…
I have been able to compile in an orderly fashion the archives rescued from film libraries, collections and historical funds, as well as to provide formal rigour to much of the scientific work that I have been developing throughout my life on Buñuel’s work… From all that was discovered, first and foremost emerged his continuous re-exploration of the nuclear elements coming from Surrealism, which formed a good part of his poetics and therefore of his filmography, which undoubtedly transcended his two seminal works of art, Un Chien andalou and L’Âge d’or. This gave rise to the analysis of the influence exerted on him not only by certain literary authors, but also, and above all, by great masters of painting, ranging from some outstanding figures of the Renaissance, through Goya, to the surrealist painters, where René Magritte stands out above all… Buñuel always worked from self-criticism, contradiction, his priceless sense of humour and a highly commendable vocation of proximity in his plots and always in favour of the public. This turned a good part of his films into a cinema that was as demanding as it was “suitable for all audiences”, all this without renouncing his singular discourse, laden with criticism, reflection and intellectual depth.
With all these elements in my palette, I could not help but capture them in the same way and in the same medium, the cinema, in honour of our author and his work, imbuing this documentary with an imprint that is uniquely identifiable; without renouncing the particular humour and refinement of Buñuel, making this work an amalgam of the transcript of our author and a ‘surreal’ way of composing his work.

Javier Espada