Las Hurdes, Earth without bread

There are disagreements on neutrality in the point of view of the current comment version. Reason: A partial and subjective defense of the manipulation of the documentary is made, considered in other areas as ethnofiction

Las Hurdes, Earth without bread It is a 33 -minute documentary, led by the filmmaker Luis Buñuel and shot between April 23 and May 22, 1933. ^{[ first ]} ​

Although it was originally mute, in 1935 he obtained money from the Spanish Embassy in Paris to sound it (narrated in French by a superimposed voice).

This is a reference work in documentary cinema, since the prestigious Mannheim Film Festival in 1964 included it among the twelve best documentaries in history. ^{[ 2 ]} ​

Production [ To edit ]

The film develops in Las Hurdes, a mountainous region of the province of Cáceres (Spain) around the town of La Alberca, whose inhabitants were so underdeveloped and isolated that even the bread was unknown to them. According to the film, the main income for this town was the subsidy of the government they received by admitting orphaned children. Buñuel, who made the film after reading the anthropological study of Maurice Legendre Las Jurdes: Study of human geography (1927), ^{[ 3 ]} He took a surreal approach when carrying out his anthropological expedition. The result was a documentary in which the exaggerated descriptions of the narrator about the human misery of Hurdes contrast with the flat and selfless attitude of the inhabitants.

This documentary crude about the situation of delay in which the Hurdes remained is based on an anthropology study by Maurice Legendre, who had studied the Hurdes for almost twenty years, entitled Las Jurdes: Study of human geography (1927), which in those years read the filmmaker. With this film Buñuel takes a turn to his work, moving away from Orthodox surrealism to approach more social proposals and anti -fascism. But surrealism (which in French is literally “about reality”) always aspired to reflect reality in its different facets and never turn its back. Both the “holy objectivity”, which at the time advocated Dalí, as well as his “paranoid-critical method”, started from reality to find the elements never conventionally seen to constitute new facets of surrealism, which was not in vain, it was a movement of rebellion Against bourgeois society in all its aspects and had as its main weapon the scandal. A good part of these objectives are met in this Buñuel tape, because it managed to scandalize the rulers and intellectuals of their time and thus obtained a repercussion that allowed spreading the social message and complaint that this documentary financed by the anarchist intellectual Ramón Acín Acín . ^{[ 4 ]} ​ ^{[ required page ]} The terrible and bitter beauty of the images of THE HURDES (The donkey killed by bees, the child’s burial in his white coffin descending through the river) encloses both surrealism and the documentary fragments of The Golden Age .

In this documentary there is a tour of the region and the inhabitants of Las Hurdes. The film reflects the situation in which some areas of Spain were. The legitimacy of the film as an anthropological documentary is controversial, as Buñuel, in addition to shooting the inhabitants and customs of this Cacereña region, sometimes built scenes to the extent of their needs and following the aesthetic fashion of the “black Spain”, as fixed photos of the filming that are preserved. It can be observed, in this sense, that the clever goat was killed by a shotgun whose smoke is observed in the film’s own images. Likewise, the donkey killed by the bees and devoured by dogs and vultures has the legs tied, and coincides with one of the most obsessive motifs for the filmmaker, that of the carnuz, which already appeared in the environment of the student residence, and You can document in several Dalí paintings of that time and in the rotten donkeys on top of the pianos of An Andalusian dog . Some documentaries such as Pío Caro Baroja have reproached him for this manipulation of reality and the damage caused to the Hurdans, protagonists of a truculent exhibition. However, we must think about whether there is any documentary that does not select and manipulate to a greater or lesser extent the objective reality in the direction of the purposes pursued, which in this case, let’s not forget, were to denounce before the authorities a situation of delay to the delay to the That we had to remedy, in the line of the communist values ​​to which the André Breton group had been approaching in the thirties. It is worth asking if it had been as effective as social testimony of not having exaggerated some deficiencies that highlighted the institutional neglect that had allowed them.

Anyway, the work has been praised by great documentaries such as Joris Ivens, Joseph Losey and Robert Flaherty. Carlos Saura had it as a starting point for his documentary Basin , as a result of which he would declare in 1958: ^{[ required appointment ]}

In 1932, when Luis Buñuel made Earth without bread , a genuine school of the documentary could be born, connected with the deepest roots of the Hispanic temperament. It only had to follow the path that Luis Buñuel left us, but nobody did.

At the premiere of the film at the Madrid Press Palace, Dr. Gregorio Marañón attended, who had accompanied Alfonso XIII during his visit to Las Hurdes in 1922. ^{[ 5 ]} Outraged by the unpleasant and according to him the unfair of the film, protested vigorously against her, ^{[ required appointment ]} opinion that the government of the Second Republic received and shared ^{[ required appointment ]} who decided to prohibit her from the bad image she presented from Spain. In 1937 the film premiered in France where, also a few days after its projection, it had to be withdrawn at the instances of the French government and the press. ^{[ required appointment ]}

It is curious to observe that almost twenty years later something similar happened with the movie The forgotten , which portrayed the most depressed neighborhoods in Mexico City and whose premiere in Mexico caused violent reactions. The expulsion of Buñuel by the press, unions and other associations was requested. He remained only four days on the poster without missing attempts of physical aggression against the filmmaker, ^{[ required appointment ]} Only on this occasion the award won at the Cannes Festival made the film endorsed by the prestige of this important contest, as well as for the defense made by some Mexican intellectuals, among which Octavio Paz highlighted.

Buñuel killed at least two animals during the filming of THE HURDES . A Hurdano said he had made the arrangements for a sick donkey to be covered with honey so that it could be filmed while chopped until death by bees. In addition to that, his team shot a Montés goat next to a cliff to be able to film her. ^{[ 7 ]} ​

Regarding the death of the goat, after much insisting to provoke his clearance and not get it, Buñuel himself shot him (as seen in the discards of the film), his fall being filmed. Thus two objectives were met: reflect the fact documented by Legendre and invite the neighbors to eat meat, to thank them for their collaboration in the filming. As for the donkey, in a photogram of the documentary it can be seen that it receives the impact of a bullet and begins its collapse, although in the assembly it is shown below defending themselves from the bees ^{[ 8 ]} ​

As for the issue of death, in this film the insistent intervention of images or metaphors related to the organic fact of death is appreciable, until it appears as the backbone of the film discourse, coming to comment on the announcer that is “one of the Rare events that occur in these villages “and their appearance occurs in the following ways: visible and real: skulls, roosters, goat, donkey, tombs. Visible and false: baby (who lived a few more years). Invisible and real: proclaimed in the pool. Invisible and false: sick girl (I was alive in 1996). The reiteration of this presence, real or figurative, of death, with the expression of agonies, is considered one of the factors that cause the discomfort that the film produces in its spectators.

Due to their mixture of reality and manipulation, many consider Fake or false documentary, denomination that applies to works that are presented as real being fiction, while in this case it is a faithful adaptation of a scientific work (Legendre’s thesis), and although it mixes the ethnographic report with the staging or staging or Stage of shares (as was the case in Nanook Flaherty) can be considered truthful for showing authentic facts and situations, and its gender could be anthropological recreation.

Although it is deceived with the presentation of various facts, they correspond to film recreations of proven cultural realities (Brisset, 2006: p. 16).

See also [ To edit ]

Bibliography [ To edit ]

external links [ To edit ]