LAND WITHOUT BREAD

'''Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan''' (1932), (English language: '''Land Without Bread''' or '''Unpromised Land''') is a 28-minute-long documentary film directed by Luis Buñuel and co-produced by Bunuel and Ramon Acin. The narration was written by Bunuel, Rafael Sanchez Ventura, and Pierre Unik, with cinematography by Eli Lotar.
The film focuses on the Las Hurdes region of Spain, the mountainous area around the town La Alberca, and the intense poverty of its occupants. Buñuel, who made the film after reading the ethnographic study ''Las Jurdes: étude de géographie humaine'' (1927) by Maurice Legendre, took a Surrealist approach to the notion of the anthropological expedition. The result was a travelogue in which a disinterested narrator provides unverifiable, gratuitous, and wildly exaggerated descriptions of the human misery of Las Hurdes.
Although some film scholars describe it as a documentary, ''Land Without Bread'' is actually an early (some might say prescient) parody -- some would say a Surrealist parody -- of the barely invented genre of documentary filmmaking, according to anthropologist Jeffrey Ruoff^[1].
The film was originally silent, though Buñuel himself narrated when it was first shown. A French narration by actor Abel Jacquin was added in Paris in 1935. Buñuel used extracts of Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 4 for the music.
Buñuel slaughtered at least two animals to make ''Las Hurdes''. He ordered an ailing donkey to be covered with honey so he could film it being stung to death by bees. Similarly, his crew shot a mountain goat and threw its carcass from a cliff for another sequence.
The film was banned in Spain from 1933 to 1936.

Contents

References

External links

References

1. Ruoff, Jeffrey. An Ethnographic Surrealist Film: Luis Buñuel's Land Without Bread. Visual Anthropology Review 14, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1998), 45-57

External links

★

★ Videoartworld : The Masters Series - includes complete video of Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread)