Maegan LaPlante

Minutes for 4/12/04

Spanish film has grown in the last ten to fifteen years in Latin America and Spain.  Directors such as Bunnel, Saura, and Almodóvar have been influenced by Spanish culture and literature and in turn have been influencing the younger directors.  .

Bunnel is the first of the directors, dating back to the 20’s.  He started making films in the silent era.  Bunnel made films about dreams and reality; the idea that we cannot always tell when we are in reality.  At times his films are surreal.  It is a depiction of dreams/nightmares; in a sense of the subconscious.  He experiments with the idea of what can films do well?  Bunnel plays with Freud’s theories from his book, Book of Dreams in his film Un chien andulou (1928).  The film shows how reality is never really defined.  It is hard to tell what is real.  We watched a clip of nothingness.  There were continuously new plots being formed- non sequiturs.  The director was playing with our minds. Bunnel wants to show us that playing with our minds is what film does.  Film is a bunch of discontinuities.  The scenes are smoothed together with music (shows connection between A & B, which has no connection) and smooth edits.  Also, Bunnel made his ilms in France because of the Civil War in Spain at the time.

Another film of Bunnel’s is, Discrete Charmof the  Bourgeoisie (1978).  It is a simple idea that expands into 90 minutes.  The bourgeoisie is unsatisfied which is symbolized by them not eating.  The clip that we watched was about a couple who has invited another couple for dinner who arrived on the wrong date.  They then decided to go out because of the misunderstanding.  The couples arrive at a deserted restaurant.  They began to order when they realize that the manager is lies dead in the other room.  The party decides to leave and go to another restaurant.  At the other restaurant the server drops the food and the curtain opens and it appears that they are on stage.  Throughout the clip the couples never actually eat.

We also watched a clip from Carmen, directed by Saura.  In this film Saura allows the ballet and reality of the film to merge more and more so that we do not know where the practicing of the ballet has stopped and the movie has began.  The clip shown begins with Christina and Carmen dancing, which shows their rivalry among one another.  Later in the scene Carmen grabs a knife and cuts Christina.  The question is does Carmen kill Christina in the movie?

The youngest director is Almodóvar.  We watched a clip from his film Tie me up tie me down (1992).  The film begins with an actress being kidnapped in a film being shot, which will be mirrored in the film’s story itself.