Las Hurdes (1933), Luis Buñuel's third film and only documentary, has been the subject of critical attention throughout the past decade. Nevertheless, its early reception during the Thirties and its relationship to the political events of the Second Republic have been scarcely mentioned. This article seeks not only to historically contextualize the film, but also to examine the multiple references within the film to the conventions of documentary, the emerging disciplines of geography and ethnography, and the influence of the film's cameraman Eli Lotar and dissident surrealism. The article demonstrates that the film engages an aesthetic of collage and juxtaposition to provoke a different understanding of documentary, ethnography and the Spanish landscape.
ResumenLa politización de la geografía en el film de Luis Buñuel Las Hurdes: Tierra sin pan Las Hurdes (1933), la tercera película y único documental de Luis Buñuel, ha sido objeto de una amplia crítica a lo largo de los últimos años. Sin embargo, la primera época de su recepción y la relación de la película con los acontecimientos políticos de la Segunda República apenas han sido mencionadas. Este artículo pretende no solamente contextualizar la película históricamente, sino también examinar las múltiples referencias a las características típicas de los documentales, a las disciplinas emergentes de geografía y etnografía y a la influencia del cámara Eli Lotar y del surrealismo disidente presentes en la película. El artículo demuestra que la película utiliza una estética de collage y yuxtaposición para dar una visión distinta de los documentales, de la etnografía y del paisaje español.
Publicity in Barcelona during the 1930s generated some remarkable examples of visual modernity that at the same time function as indicators of a widespread cultural practice motivated by the intersection of applied psychology and photographic experimentation. One of the foremost theoreticians and practitioners of the use of photography in advertising was Pere Català-Pic, who through his involvement with the Generalitat’s Institut Psicotècnic was also a leader in the rationalization and teaching of publicity. This essay examines Català-Pic’s work in the light of his critical writings on the phototechnician and his central role in the transformation of commercial publicity into political propaganda during the Civil War, a process that drew upon the debates of the previous decade and that is illuminated through the study of Català-Pic’s public and private correspondence with Pedro Prat-Gaballí.
Margaret Michaelis was a Jewish, Austrian, anarchist photographer working in Barcelona from 1933 to 1937. Her photographs of modern architecture are considered icons in the history of Spanish culture, yet her authorship of these images and the details of her biography were unknown until recently. By giving up authorship (most of her work was published anonymously) and engaging in a stridently heterogeneous photographic practice (studio, commercial, documentary, etc.), Michaelis entered the history of European modernism through one of its "peripheral" or "multiple" modernities, that of the Catalan avant-garde.
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