Lecture & Film: Luis Buñuel
»TRISTANA: The Impulse of Memory and Reputation«
Lecture by Prof. Jordi Xifra (Barcelona)
Recording of the event on 22 June 2023 at the DFF cinema
The shy orphan Tristana (Catherine Deneuve) lives as a maid with Don Lope, an ageing and vain caballero. When he forces her to become his mistress, Tristana puts up little resistance. One day, however, she runs away with the young painter Horacio, leaving her former benefactor in the lurch. “It is no exaggeration to say that TRISTANA (1970) is a film that comes as a shock. Suddenly, just when the film seems to be heading towards a canonical conclusion, Buñuel interrupts its predictability and leaves the viewer in a state of astonishment that undermines any sense of security”. (Jordi Xifra)
In his lecture, Jordi Xifra examines the film’s final sequence and related issues using Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the impulse image.
Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) is a figure of the century, not only in cinema. With UN CHIEN ANDALOU, he gave surrealism its definitive face and added a new dimension to cinema. Like no other, Buñuel understood cinema as an art of revolutionary imagination and explored in his films the depths of modernity between utopian hope and secular catastrophe.
In this series, renowned experts from Europe and the USA present the many facets of Buñuel’s work – from his early surrealist works, the documentary films of the 1930s and the films made in Mexico to his major works of the 1960s. The series concludes with Buñuel’s films from the 1970s.
Film:
TRISTANA
Spain 1970
Director: Luis Buñuel
