Containing nearly forty interviews with assorted individuals pertinent to various stages of Buñuel’s life – those involved in his creative endeavors and/or personal experiences – as well as a 101-page conversation with the director himself this text is a multifaceted portrait of a singular artist but it is a portrait that still raises many questions Conducted and compiled by novelist/playwright/critic Aub in the late 1960s and early 1970s professor emerita at the University of New Orleans has also been expanded with additional interviews “contextualize the conversations and acknowledge the discoveries of recent studies on Buñuel.” Sure enough it takes some context to even get Conversations with Buñuel underway Following Jones’ translator’s introduction is Aub’s personal prologue and a foreword to the 1985 edition by Federico Álvarez These introductory comments mostly concern the copious material assembled by Aub – equipped with a cassette recorder he amassed 5,000 transcribed pages of interviews – and the daunting process of what to do next – Aub passed away 22 July 1972 leaving “copious hand-written folios and a healthy assortment of ephemera related to his subject” (2) Enter Professor Jones “The many different visions of Buñuel provided not only by his friends and relations but also by the filmmaker himself made him a particularly elusive subject and Aub finally decided that instead of trying to reconcile these different impressions he would include them all – or almost all – ‘not so the reader could choose between them which indeed they are in some sense’’ (1) It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of reliability but it does establish the factual malleability of most every conversation in the anthology Aub readily acknowledges the Buñuel inclination to stretch the truth at one point referring to his focus as a “fictional character” (7) Aub had known Buñuel since first meeting him in Paris in 1925 the two friends and collaborators worked together at the embassy of the Spanish Republic and both settled in Mexico Buñuel was therefore “hard put to deceive Aub who knew him and his circumstances in ways that few interviewers could claim” (1) Jones also notes Buñuel’s almost gleeful tendency to embellish and deny “was notorious for feeding the press – and indeed everyone else – versions of his life that were often fanciful especially regarding any subject he considered touchy” (1) it’s hard to imagine Buñuel was always forthright even with so discerning an investigator as Aub Álvarez’s forward teases the dubious nature of some of the content in Conversations with Buñuel at least as far as the conversations with friends Álvarez writes that he heard Aub say he would let Buñuel read everything before the completed book went to press so as to circumvent “careless or unfounded comments that might inflict harm” (14) But when Álvarez went to Buñuel about some of the potential issues If somebody says I was in love with my mother Conversations with Buñuel: Interviews with the Filmmaker Friends and Collaborators is a sweeping collection of stories and details some of which may not; but all are alive with diverse voices evoking unique points in Buñuel’s life and career and describing their respective involvement most everyone speaks with great compassion Although Aub tells Buñuel the proposed book is not to be strictly about him but about their generation – including wars and revolutions as well as cultural and artistic developments – in his direct engagement with Buñuel and in the numerous conversations that follow Aub spends considerable time attempting to pin down biographical He covers everything from Buñuel’s family history (with substantial focus on Buñuel’s father and his shadowy time spent in Cuba) his recurring love of firearms and alcohol (hopefully not together) Some of what Buñuel leaves undeveloped or imprecise (the family’s wealth is partially fulfilled later by his siblings Though she has some difficulty remembering specific details (willfully or not – perhaps a trick she learned from her husband) Discussing Buñuel’s reluctance to talk to her about his working methods and ideas the little girl he kept apart from the rest of his life He never talked to me – not even now – about politics Further pieces of Buñuelian miscellanea are repeatedly mentioned by Buñuel himself or those with first-hand knowledge This includes his self-confessed capacity for violence as a young man and his fondly-recalled penchant for dressing up or – one of his favorite costumes – a priest and not surprisingly to anyone familiar with Buñuel’s best work or some of his most famous declarations (“Thank God I’m an atheist!”) the topic of religion arises with regularity These discussions extend from Buñuel’s sacred doubt as a teen He is also more than willing to acknowledge the contradictory nature of his atheism drawing a parallel between his own temperament and that of Fernando Rey’s similarly skeptical Don Lope in Tristana (1970): “Yes very anti-clerical at the beginning and then drinking hot chocolate – and what chocolate Family members also question his ambivalent commitment to such militant disbelief which some see as both disheartening and confounding Several point to the recurrent Christian iconography in his work as evidence itself of a wavering incredulity argue Buñuel’s atheism is largely a façade: “He does it all to fool everybody especially to fool his sisters” (119) these conversations also turn to the surrealism so central to Buñuel’s art and life but have a continuous persistent effect” (17) who adamantly defends his surrealist credentials and declares that when it comes poetry Buñuel profusely praises the Marquis de Sade even as he downplays the role of artistic inspiration in his life but in people” [48].) The talk of surrealism turns to the touchy topic of Dalí who collaborated with Bunuel on Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L’Age d’Or (1930) and later had a fierce falling out with the director over certain political and religious matters Buñuel is quick to diminish Dali’s role in his early film work “The only thing he did [on Un Chien Andalou] was put the donkeys on the pianos and the tar around their eyes Buñuel on Dali: “The only thing he did [on Un Chien Andalou] was put the donkeys on the pianos and the tar around their eyes he didn’t do anything”Conversations with Buñuel is a dense there is a condensed amount of talk directly related to Buñuel’s cinematic achievements his acting debut in Jacques Feyder’s Carmen (1926) and though he credits Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921) as the film that made him want to be a director – “It convinced me that film could be a form of art” (36) – he also describes the movie as “bad … But it was a film with no inter-titles” (35) There is some discussion about his ill-fated time in Hollywood the foundation and dissolution of his MGM contract (on Irving Thalberg: “One of the most sinister people that ever came out of Hollywood  – he’s the one who hounded von Stroheim who mutilated Greed and didn’t let him finish Merry-Go-Round…” (51) and he amusingly remembers the Mexican controversy of Los olvidados (1950) and how “its success in Europe shut everyone up” (83) the topic of his life’s work is somewhat deficient Buñuel sometimes opens up about art in revealing ways and to recognize the importance of chance” (26) but then he almost instantly contradicts himself agreeing that violence is the fundamental theme of his art declaring he only sees the violence when others show it to him; otherwise Others sporadically chime in regarding Buñuel the great director who argues that all of Buñuel’s later work Several interviewees happily proffer their assorted interpretations of Buñuel’s filmography (and many take an obvious pride in their authority of his oeuvre) but Gustavo Alatriste might have the best observation “it has the worst directors in the world and From the thorough one-on-one with Buñuel to the subsequent talks of varying length the tone of Conversations with Buñuel is casual and candid with repetitions and halts for clarification (Buñuel was famously – strategically Bracketed portions are skipped over (often for unstated reasons) and the conversations abound in unnoted in-jokes and name drops Aside from the segments featuring Juan Larrea and Ricardo Muñoz Suay (Larrea’s inclusion is a letter to Aub the dialogues are presented as an engaging occasionally jumbled back-and forth (there is no “he said/she said” attribution so a passage will go on without cues or reminders of who is saying what) The structure proves exceptionally comical especially when it comes to Aub’s chat with Buñuel who gets tripped up in his own misremembrances discussing Buñuel’s Communist affiliations and his attending of the Spanish Party in Paris: when Buñuel talks about learning to play the violin instead of the piano partly on the basis of being able to carry it around Aub also steps in from time to time to interject on Buñuel’s erroneous comments (and there are several) alerting the reader with phrases like “As we’ve seen this was not actually the case,” correcting years Buñuel finds creative ways to escape a line of thought: If there’s one essential takeaway from Conversations with Buñuel it’s that Luis Buñuel thoroughly enjoys his freedom and his fun his infectious sense of humor includes practical jokes and bawdy gestures while so many of his comments suggest a sly sense of knowing far more than he lets on (like his deafness this allows him to evade particular questions) however truthful they may be: “I’m in favor of dictatorships,” he asserts at one point Since man is evil … a dictatorship is the only effective way to govern and I still am even though all my communist friends get upset about it” (59) referring to his father’s rumored interracial affairs: “I don’t believe he was the kind of person who would go to bed with black women or mulattos but I don’t see myself with mulatto brothers and sisters” (19) This incessant playfulness can resonate well with the Buñuel admirer that facetiousness could certainly make things difficult; in discussing whether Buñuel disliked the wife of his son because of her Jewishness or American heritage I don’t know what his real position is” (231) Max Aub’s Conversations with Buñuel: Interviews with the Filmmaker Friends and Collaborators divulges a wealth of information Yet the subjective nature of each conversation coupled with the caveat of a consistently inconsistent Buñuel leaves one to nevertheless question how much is wholly accurate Though there are irrefutable facts and figures much of it still reads as a classically Buñuelian narrative Maybe that’s the great director’s enduring final punchline Jeremy Carr teaches film studies at Arizona State University and writes for the publications Film International Since I’m going through the new Studio Canal Blu-Ray set of Bunuel Comment document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id" "a499f1100a0f6363c1de668a6c0c8e5a" );document.getElementById("hf9f39403d").setAttribute( "id" and website in this browser for the next time I comment DriveMag Riders Transylvania Moto Experience is a small company in Romania which offers motorcycle adventure holidays. The man behind this project is Mihai Palos and he says that the world has already been mapped, but never discovered truthfully. Thus, he has a couple of roads around Transylvania which might be one of the best motorcycle roads in Romania Some of you might know this route for being named the Best Road in the World according to BBC’s Top Gear and MotorBikeEurope.com That is quite a challenge if we look to Stelvio Pass in Switzerland and we think that each road is special in its own way It was built in the early ‘70s under the command of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu as a response to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia The former dictator wanted quick military access across the mountains in case of an invasion it was designed as a strategic military route to connect the historic regions of Transylvania and Wallachia and stretches 90 kilometres (56 miles) to the crossroad between the DN1 road and Sibiu It passes major cities like Curtea de Arges The end of the route is Arpasu de Jos region The road climbs to an altitude of 2,042 metres (6,699 ft), making it the second-highest mountain pass in Romania after the Transalpina. It’s a winding road, dotted with steep hairpin turns, long S-curves, and sharp descents. The road also provides access to Balea Lake and Balea Waterfall the road is usually closed from late October until late June because of snow The Transfagarasan Pass has more tunnels (a total of 5) and viaducts than any other road in Romania the longest road tunnel in Romania at 884 m (2,900 ft) The castle was the residence of Vlad the Impaler which was the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula The road is located in the Parang Mountains group, in the Southern Carpathians of Romania It connects the Novaci village to Sebes over a 148km route Transalpina is one of the highest roads of the Carpathian Mountains and it offers a fast connection between the Oltenia and Transylvania regions The course has its highest point at the Urdele Pass where the elevation is 2,145m above sea level The road was built under King Carol the second and was constructed over an old Roman road it was consolidated during World War 2 by the German army It’s located in the south-central part of Romania and the road goes through the Bucegi Natural Park It links the village of Sinaia and the Bucegi Mountains Plateau The route is the third-highest altitude road in the country at an altitude of 1,925m (6,315ft) The road is 20 km long (17 of them tarmac) and it consists of twisty hairpin corners The road’s elevation changes from 2,495 feet at Sinaia to almost 6,315 feet at Bucegi National Park The other 3 km are considered a protected area and therefore are off-limits to riders or drivers TransBucegi was built in from 2010 and the construction lasted three years sinuous road close to The Old Ladies and The Sphinx – famous Romanian rock formations shaped by the wind The road is opened all year round thanks to the weather conditions The road is 16,9km long and is located between some of Romania’s most picturesque mountains It connects Wallachia to Transylvania regions There are a couple of sites to visit like Zarnesti the main attraction is the famous Bran Castle also known as the fortress of Count Dracula You can view a full photo gallery by clicking on the main picture in the story Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id" "a88b123a1692f640a9dbfe41fed4e0d5" );document.getElementById("fac8a552ad").setAttribute( "id" the new BMW R1250RT features an Adaptive… would say the adventure motorcycle aficionados The BMW R1250GS and R1250GSA were updated for 2021 The upcoming 2021 Triumph Trident has been seen in full form and camouflaged during some tests near the British manufacturer’s… Ducati is ready to launch to long-anticipated Multistrada V4 adventure motorcycle on October 15 Britain’s Eisenberg Racing fitted a V8 engine on a custom motorcycle The engine displacement is 3000cc while the total output… Valentino Rossi has signed a contract to race with the Petronas Yamaha Sepang Racing Team for the 2021… If the Marquis de Sade had lived anytime during the 20th century perhaps he would have made a film like L’Age d’Or Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí were commissioned by Marie-Laurie and Charles de Noailles to produce a follow-up to Un Chien Andalou, 16 minutes that forever changed the face of cinema. Much like The Phantom of Liberty L’Age d’Or is structured as a vicious string of gags Dali “wrote that his intentions ‘in writing the screenplay’ were to expose the shameful mechanisms of contemporary society the irresistible force that thrusts two people together and about the impossibility of their ever becoming one.” L’Age d’Or is a little bit of both then married to Olympic bronze medallist Jeanne Rucar met Dali’s future wife Gala in Cadaqués in 1929 “I found myself saying that what repelled me more than anything else in the female anatomy was when a woman had a large space between her thighs,” said the fetishistic Buñuel who would later choke Gala in a blind rage after a trivial disagreement “Our ideas clashed to such an extent that we finally stopped collaborating on L’Age d’Or.” How ironic that this film about impossible love would serve as the backdrop for Buñuel’s rejection of Dali’s love for Gala and put an end to their incredible creative allegiance Four bishops worship alongside a mountaintop before rotting away beneath the ardent Spanish sun A bandit (Max Ernst) revolts against a group of Majorcan citizens his death (he’s defeated before he could ever make physical contact with the “enemy”) suggestive of a futile lower-class struggle against high society a Man (Gaston Modot) and Woman (Lya Lys) make passionate love the couple spends the duration of the film fending off church and bourgeois strangleholds From the film’s accompanying program comes this particularly insightful commentary: “It is love that brings about the transition from pessimism to action: Love denounced in the bourgeois demonology as the root of all evil For love demands the sacrifice of every other value: status and honor.” This thwarted love must now seemingly transcend itself in order to win its war against oppression this struggle is a particularly pervasive one the film’s high society is viciously self-devouring: the Woman is the daughter of a marquise and the Man is the Ambassador of Good Will (appointed to the position not long after knocking down a blind man begging for alms) Unconsummated desire leads to erotic displacement This is Buñuel’s fabulous cinema of fetishist codes: Mordot sees Lys in advertisements on the street; a breezy sky permits self-love; and Lys performs fellatio on the toes of the statue of Venus Buñuel speaks fondly of the drums of Good Friday: “Nowhere are they beaten with such mysterious power as in Calanda.” They beat “in recognition of the shadows that covered the earth at the moment Christ died.” The sounds of these drums (the music of a humble people) are unnervingly juxtaposed with the music of the L’Age d’Or’s privileged class “When two groups beating two different tempi meet on one of the village streets they engage in a veritable duel which may last as long as an hour—or at least until the weaker group relents and takes up the victor’s rhythm the skin on the drums is stained with blood even though the beating hands belong to hardworking peasants.” Somewhere in an impregnable castle the survivors of the film’s Chateau de Selliny partake in a Sadian orgy the giddy doppelganger for a sexually liberated Jesus) The sound of Debussy loses out to the drums of Calanda and Buñuel suggests that love can conquer all sorts of moral restraints the director’s atheistic humanism ravishingly contemplates the freedom of men uncontaminated by God The surrealist manifesto included in the film’s original theater program suggests that “the social function of L’Age d’Or must be to urge the oppressed to satisfy their hunger for destruction and perhaps even to cater for the masochism of the oppressor.” It’s no coincidence then that film suspiciously begins as a documentary on scorpions a class of arachnid predominantly found in the hottest regions of the Western world One of the more telling title cards reads: “Not at all sociable it ejects the intruder who comes to disturb its solitude.” A scorpion then cripples and devours a large rat While the scorpion itself is not unlike the meddlesome bourgeois of the film’s second half the arachnid comes to represent any and all mechanisms of oppression the Surrealists “made very clear distinctions between good and evil the beautiful and the ugly.” Buñuel scoffed at critics who praised his visual aesthetic perhaps because the Surrealists were self-named anti-visualists And though there is no denying the potency of his images Buñuel was more a master theorist: a purveyor of anti-oppressive codes and signs It’s telling that he was fan of the Marquis de Sade’s “recipe for cultural revolution.” Indeed if de Sade had lived anytime during the 20th century Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine A member of the New York Film Critics Circle his writing has appeared in The Village Voice document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id" "a1335d784cbe9e6cce4a3ae7e3733d07" );document.getElementById("facec42938").setAttribute( "id" A rare and important painting bearing the signature of Ioan Andreescu will be put for sale at the Former Masters of the Romanian Art created by Nicolae Grigorescu and Stefan Luchian are expected to stir important offers Pot with Spring Flowers (Ulcica cu flori de primavara – in picture) is the center piece of this auction part of the Gheorghe Bellu family collection Hadn’t it been for Andreescu’s premature death at 32 the painter is believed to have reached a level of appreciation larger than Grigorescu  The painting has an estimated value of EUR 125,000 – EUR 175,000 Other important paintings are Rucar Hearth (Vatra la Rucar), by Nicolae Grigorescu, estimated at between EUR 50,000 and EUR 80,000 and Peasant Girl (Tarancuta) by Stefan Luchian, woth between EUR 20,000 and EUR 40,000. belonging to paintings from predominantly the nineteenth century will be auctioned at JW Marriott Bucharest Grand Hotel All the works may be seen between May 7 and May 12 at the hotel We use cookies for keeping our website reliable and secure providing social media features and to analyse how our website is used The third edition of the Medieval camp for children will take place between June 19 and August 13 and will consist six series of a week each the young aspiring knights and ladies will be surrounded by medieval decors and will wear costumes in accordance with the times To last year’s  workshops (medieval sword handling there will be added two more (medieval music and dance children will listen to medieval legends or will watch historical films children will take part in a festive evening during which they will be attributed with noble titles As in 2010, the camp will take place in the Rucar-Bran area, in Fundata (Casa Muntelui B&B) and Moeciu de Sus (Dor de Moeciu B&B). More information is available on the camp’s site, www.tabara-medievala.ro, unfortunately currently only available in Romania. Corina Dumitrescu the health and detox program for body and mind has announced a new camp with over 60 participants at Fundatica The provider of this service aims to grow its turnover to EUR 200,000 this year The Code business was founded in June 2015 by three Romanian entrepreneurs The investment was valued at EUR 100,000 and represented a niche in the services from this field one of them including a one week travel to a camp for  body and mind detox the program attracted over 300 participants worldwide many are Romanians coming from foreign countries participants consume on average 40-50 kg vegetables and fruits in juice and other additional products specific for The Code program between 21-28 liters of alkaline water and teas Georgiana Bendre Romanian mountains are best discovered on foot But if you plan on traveling on the roads that cross them you will encounter some of the most beautiful roads in Romania Check our list of 5 most beautiful roads in the country to ride on next time you visit Transfagarasan, named by Top Gear presenters “the best road in the world,” crosses the Fagaras Mountains, the tallest in the country (Moldoveanu Peak 2,544 meters). This spectacular 151 kilometers road starts in Bascov, Arges County and ends in Cartisoara, Sibiu County. Part of DN7C, connecting Wallachia to Transylvania, it reaches heights of 2,042 meters, and features 27 viaducts, bridges and an 800 meters tunnel. Transalpina is the highest road in Romania as more than 20 kilometers are located at an altitude of over 2,000 meters The road was opened in 1939 by King Carol II Transalpina hosts the car racing competition and the Tour of Romania cycling competition Dunarii Gorge a 9 kilometer stretch on the road passing the gorge offers the best views over the second largest river in Europe At the bottom of the limestone wall part of Cazanele Mari the 55 meters tall and 25 meters wide statue of Decebal is one of the attractions of this scenic road Located between some of Romania’s most picturesque mountains Pasul Rucar Bran is set on a historic route that connects Wallachia to Transylvania.When crossing Pasul Rucar-Bran a stop at one of the guest houses in the area is a must Rasnov or Bran and find a nice guest house to spend a few evenings The most famous attraction near Pasul Rucar Bran is the Bran Castle a fortress that for many conjures up the name of Count Dracula The Bicaz Gorge is located in Neamt and Harghita Counties and is part of Cheile Bicazului- Hasmas National Park a passageway between Transylvania and Moldavia the Red Lake is located at 980 meters altitude on the side of the road you will be able to pick up souvenirs from the local sellers providing social media features and to analyse how our website is used.