19th May (Thursday)
21.00
Open-air Cinema "Quiet Summer"
with talk by Ernesto Heredero del Campo (Spain)

A cult surrealist film and a prime example of the French avant-garde of the 1920s, Louis Buñuel's first film is a classic of the silent film realised in collaboration with the painter Salvador Dali. This provocative film whose premiere has caused a scandal, is inspired by the authors' dreams and, in Buñuel's words, corresponds to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories and the aesthetics of the then-current surrealist movement interested in the unconscious outside of the control of the mind, morality, or aesthetics. Because of its symbolism and temporal-spatial freedom, the film is interpreted as following the nature and illogicity of the dream, but it can be also interpreted as correspondent to the literary current of the stream of consciousness novel.

19th May (Thursday)
21.00
Open-air Cinema "Quiet Summer"
with talk by Ernesto Heredero del Campo (Spain)

A travelogue with an off-commentary, inspired by the ethnographic study of the French anthropologist Maurice Legendre, on the mountainous region of Spain, Las Hurdes, whose inhabitants are so much isolated and poor that they do not know what bread is. Their main source of livelihood is the adoption of orphans, for which they are receiving financial compensation from the Spanish government.

19th May (Thursday)
21.00
Open-air Cinema "Quiet Summer"
with talk by Ernesto Heredero del Campo (Spain)

Middle-length film with fantastic elements, made in Mexico in 1965, after Buñuel was forced to return to exile after the scandal he causeд in Spain with 'Viridiana' (1961). The script is based on a story by Buñuel inspired by the life of the ascetic Simeon Stylites, a Christian saint who lived in Syria in the VI century. In this contemplative work, Buñuel, in his own manner, opposes the asceticism, prayer, and miracle-working of the protagonist, who lives on top of a column in the desert, with the disbelief, hypocrisy, and selfishness of, both, the ordinary man and the representatives of the official church. According to the biography of the saint, here too the main character is subjected to satanic temptations, but in the final scene of Buñuel's rendition of the story, the devil takes Simon to a nightclub in New York, in the XX century.
The film, which was awarded by the Venice IFF Jury, was originally planned to be a feature-length omnibus with also the participation of Federico Fellini and Jules Dassin, but only Buñuel did his part.

21st May (Saturday)
21:00
Cinematheque
dir. Luis Bunuel
with on-line talk by Luis Martin Arias (Spain)

Besides "Viridiana" (1961) and later "Simon of the Desert" (1965), "The Exterminating Angel" is Buñuel's third film, starring Mexican actress Sylvia Pinal, and together with these two films, he makes a trilogy critical of social authorities: the rich, the bourgeoisie, and the Catholic Church. With a simple style, frequent use of medium shots and small camera movements, Buñuel mocks the rituals of high society through the frequent repetitions presented through multiple entrances to the same room and re-acquaintances of the protagonists, as well as ironic lines and unrelated dialogues. and at the same time, analyzes it through the prism of the irrational, established through the fantastic element of the inability of the protagonists to cross the invisible physical barrier and get out of the rich house where they are invited to dinner.
The director himself described the film as a disturbing reflection on the life of modern man, and the film is the first work in the director's opus in which fiction is entirely a function of the development of the plot. Part of the critique interprets the film as a metaphor for General Franco's regime in Spain, exposing all the powerlessness and malice of the isolated ruling class. The film won the Fipresci Critics Award at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.

20th May (Friday)
21.00
Open-air Cinema "Quiet Summer"
dir. Luis Bunuel
with talk by Stojan Sinadinov

It was Buñuel's first film made in Spain after a long, twenty-year persecution. Although the government of right-wing General Franco approved the filming, it later tried to seize and destroy all copies, and the film was banned in Spain until Franco's death in 1977. Although the official Vatican declared the film an insult to Christianity, it was awarded the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1961.
The film, inspired by the novel “Alma'' by Benito Perez Galdos, is the story of a young Viridiana who tries to practically apply the Catholic religious norms but, after failing to do so, is disappointed, accepts the rules of social conformism and enters into a kind of love affair. triangle. The film deconstructs not only the dysfunctionality of religious practices in modern society but also the moral degradation, hypocrisy, and spiritual emptiness that prevail in it. Through a powerful visual narrative that ironizes the works of Goya and Da Vinci, the film, perceived by critics as a masterpiece, features all the elements of Bunuel's surrealist poetics: free associations, ambiguous symbols, and dreams.

25th May (Wednesday)
21.00
Open-air Cinema "Quiet Summer"
dir. Luis Bunuel
with talk by Darijan Pejovski

A masterpiece with surrealist poetics, which blurs the line between the imagined and the reality, realized again in collaboration with the screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrier. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Joseph Kessel and tells the story of a young Parisian woman who leads a double life, Severin, which is brilliantly interpreted by Catherine Deneuve. Namely, she is an unemployed doctor's wife, but when he is absent from work, she, dissatisfied with the sterile civic life, experiencing visions permeated with sadistic eroticism, seeks solace in the fantasy world of the brothel and becomes a prostitute, and in it, obsessively falls in love with one of the visitors, the criminal Marcel. Buñuel shapes the film through the unbreakable interconnectedness of the dream and reality scenes, by mixing the narrative levels without conventional signals, through which the viewers, as well as the protagonist, constantly point to the necessity, and at the same time, the impossibility, of distinguishing the imaginary from the real. The film was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice.

27th May (Friday)
21.00
Cinematheque
dir. Luis Bunuel
with talk by Jasna Koteska

Buñuel's latest film, based on a novel by Pierre Louis and written in collaboration with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrier and producer Serge Silbermann, is again a work that distributes meanings on multiple levels. Thus, the connection between the two main characters—the rich middle-aged Frenchman Mathieu, brilliantly played by Fernando Rey, and the young maid, poor Spaniard Conchita, has class characteristics because he is a rich bourgeois, and she is just ordinary girl—and their corresponding psychological characteristics are presented through the sadomasochistic relationship in which Mathieu can never satisfy his sexual and romantic passions towards the girl he constantly provokes. At the same time, the moral and sexual positions of the characters are in confrontation; Mathieu acts from a position of masculine and rich privilege, while Conchita constantly takes revenge. These incompatibilities symbolize the assassinations of anarchists, and the differences between the past and the present world are emphasized by many functional retrospectives, as well as the author's ironic view.
The film is almost completely devoid of music, and a curiosity is that the character of Conchita is played by two actresses, Angela Molina and Carol Bouquet, after Maria Schneider left the filming, but that only intensifies the film's narrative. The film was nominated for an Oscar for foreign film but did not receive it, although it was well received by film critics.