Luis Buñuel: Un Chien andalou (1928)

‘A scabrous study of desire, the subconscious and anti-clericalism - Buñuel and Dalí’s provocative first film is a classic of Surrealist cinema.

“Seventeen minutes of pure, scandalous dream-imagery…reveals itself at each viewing to be richer and more indefinable, as the sensitivity of its shades of each mood become apparent.’ – Raymond Durgnat Buñuel and Dalí’s provocative first collaboration, a classic of Surrealist cinema, is a scabrous study of desire, the subconscious and anti-clericalism.’

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Available on BFI Player as well as copies on Vimeo and Youtube/

As well as watching ‘Un Chien andalou’, also watch ‘Surrealism: More Than Melting Clocks’ section (8mins) from art movements in contexts series on click view to give some context to the film and surrealism.

After watching both ‘Surrealism: More Than Melting Clocks’ feature and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien andalou (1928) on Click view. Return to ‘Surrealism: More Than Melting Clocks’ page and respond to the questions Comprehension Questions.pdf and COVID Dreams.pdf (links within page). Put a summary of your response to these questions and to the film Un Chien Andalou on your Experimental Media Arts blogs and discuss in class too.

Video reviews and analysis

Other analysis’s of Un Chein andalou

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David Lynch and Surrealism

‘Lynch’s surreal 2000 commercial for Sony Playstation (above), called “The Third Place,” is wide open for interpretation. Writer Greg Olson takes a heroic stab at it in his book, David Lynch: Beautiful Dark:

For sixty seconds we proceed through a labyrinth of Lynchian themes and motifs visualized in black and white, thus signifying the bifurcation of the world into two polarities. A man in a black suit and a white shirt encounters eerie passageways, sudden flames, barren trees, factory smoke, a woman who won’t speak her secrets, a wounded figure wrapped in bandages. The man meets his own double, and a man with a duck’s head. A sourceless voice asks, “Where are we?” The dualistic duck-man, who synthesizes animal instinct and human learning, knows: “Welcome to the third place.”

Yes. The duck-man knows.’

https://www.openculture.com/2012/02/david_lynchs_surreal_commercials.html