A. Hall - Luis Buñuel

"Luis has been so influential beyond his time mainly because he was the key player in the entire surrealist category, but also because he has been able to place himself on both sides of the lens. Dali's optical prodigy and Luis's fresh filmmaking talents created the silent short film, Un Chien andalou 1928 and success led to another collaboration, the motion picture L'Age d'or 1930. Surrealist principles concerning beauty and nature were applied on the idea of subversion and the early ethnographic methods of his time; Bunuel molded a new genre of film Surrealism which continues to shine bright within today's films and shows. The main piece of art Luis created that has been studied and will always remain is Un Chien andalou. This work spoke to many different types of people, with the dreamlike editing; Un Chien andalou is a striking and illogical metaphors intended to surprise and even provoke the audience to feel extreme amounts of emotion from the film. These types of things make this film, particularly rememberable because the artistic style of shots behind the mind of Luis. The leading mainstream American director today who has been influenced by the Surrealist is David Lynch, and this is predominantly obvious in his earlier short films such as Eraserhead and Lost Highway and even his television series Twin Peaks. Just as many other Surrealist directors he creates his own reality with its own established set of profound but psychologically rich qualities."