SECRET MOVIE CLUB presents
Part of our SURREAL SUMMER series! Wednesday, June 1, 2022
LOCATION: The Secret Movie Club Theater, 1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90021
*Please note entrance/parking is actually in the back of the building. Make a right on Wilson Street, then a right behind the building. We’re the first set of black steps after the big gate.
8pm UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929, wri & dir by Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dali, Buñuel Institute, France/Spain, 21mns, newly restored DCP)
L’AGE D’OR (1930, wri & dir by Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dali, Kino Lorber, France/Spain, 63mns, 35mm presentation)
LAS HURDES/LAND WITHOUT BREAD (1933, wri & dir by Luis Buñuel, Buñuel Institute, Spain, 27mns, newly restored DCP)
IMPORTANT NOTES:
***As of April 1, 2022, masks are now optional for indoor theater events if you're fully vaccinated. Anyone without proof of vaccination will be required to wear a mask for their own safety. We will continue to update our protocols with the dynamic situation. We are working to make sure we make the theater going experience the most enjoyable and safest possible.
HOW TO:
1)PLEASE BRING YOUR VACCINATION CARD (digital cards accepted).
2)PLEASE BE AWARE THAT ANYONE EXHIBITING COVID OR FLU LIKE SYMPTOMS AT THE DOOR, WILL BE OFFERED COMPLIMENTARY TICKETS TO A FUTURE SHOW AND ASKED TO RETURN WHEN HEALTHY. So please, if you’re feeling sick, just write us at community@secretmovieclub.com and we’ll offer you complimentary tickets to a future screening when you’re healthy. We want to make sure.
We kick off June with the first event in our Surreal Summer series: Spanish master filmmaker of the surreal Luis Buñuel’s first three movies.
It’s so hard to define surrealism well. And that’s probably what makes it such an enduring, pliable, relevant genre and art form to this very moment. Filmmakers as diverse as Buñuel, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Takashi Miike, have all gone to that place beyond words where images, sounds, scenes seem to tap into another world of our subconscious.
Buñuel made Un Chien Andalou with fellow Spaniard, master painter Salvador Dali, in Paris at the height of the great gathering of artists in France’s capital.
It’s almost impossible to describe, filled with strange images of sex, religious struggle, violence, comedy - mostly taking place in one Parisian apartment. But by the end of it, you somehow still feel that something very profound about human nature has been communicated.
Probably the most famous visual from this movie is the shocking image of a razor blade seemingly slicing through an eyeball (which in fact was a dead cow’s eye). About as confrontational an image about cinema as you can generate.
Dali and Buñuel lit the cinema world on fire with this short and quickly re-teamed (for the final time) to make a near feature length surreal movie L’Age D’Or.
L’Age D’Or is even more controversial and hilarious and sexual and strange than Un Chien Andalou as it seemingly tells the story of very strange relationships (filled with sexual idiosyncrasy) at a party of affluent people in a mansion/castle.
Ultimately, one senses the narrative is about how society, religion & class can keep two people from fully enjoying a romantic and sexual relationship. But both Dali and Buñuel layer this with wonderfully out of left field comedy like a documentary on scorpions, an ode to the Marquis D’Sade, and ultimately very blasphemous imagery about the Catholic church.
Dali and Buñuel would part ways after this as Buñuel felt more and more the importance of staying politically and civically engaged in the times in which one lives and Dali felt it was more important for the artist to remain aloof and just focus on her or his art.
Buñuel would then write and direct his first solo project, a documentary about the extremely impoverished Las Hurdes region in Spain and the daily struggles its peoples have to surmount to survive.
Buñuel made the genius decision to employ surreal techniques into the documentary form, so while we see extremely unsettling images of people’s struggle with poverty-hunger, disease, lack of education-it is all counter balanced with a hilariously detached narration that seems not to really care about what the narrator is reporting on.
Thus you find yourself laughing and then questioning why you are laughing and oddly enough becoming more concerned and engaged in the topic Buñuel is reporting on.
These three short movies would form the template for much of Buñuel’s career. After nearly 15 years adrift during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, working to keep his family alive, Buñuel would find himself in Mexico where he would have a second act making some of the greatest feature films in any language from 1947 through 1964 (then have a third act in France again with his amazing decade-long run of banger French surreal comedy satires).
We will screen one of the greatest of these Mexican surreal classics The Exterminating Angel on June 2nd!
But tonight, let’s go back to the source and the beginning. Buñuel’s first three works, classics in their own rights, made at the start of cinematic surrealism. And L’Age D’or is on 35mm!
Join us and get inspired to craft your own idiosyncratic cinema language.
Best always,
Craig Hammill
Secret Movie Club Founder.Programmer
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR OUR IN-DOOR THEATER SCREENINGS
REFUNDS:
We can offer refunds up to 24 hours before showtime. Please request a refund through Eventbrite and we will process ASAP. After that, no refunds. Sorry.
However if something last minute comes up and you can’t make the screening, for whatever reason, just write to us before showtime: community@secretmovieclub.com and we’ll offer you complimentary tickets to a future screening. (Disclaimer: Future screening must have available tickets, cannot be a fundraiser, and must be comparably priced)
HELPFUL SECRET MOVIE CLUB (1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, LA, CA 90021) THEATER PARKING TIPS:
We recommend that you park just outside our theater. Remember our theater is actually in a beautiful street art alleyway in the back of the 1917 Bay Street building. You get to our entrance by taking a right on Wilson, then a right behind the building. We are the first set of black steps on the right after the big gate.
There is also a parking lot at the corner of Mateo and Violet Street, just 2 blocks from our theater, which costs $7 per car.
HOW CAN WE STAY ON TOP OF NEWLY ANNOUNCED 35MM SCREENINGS, EVENTS, ETC?
You can follow us on Instagram/Twitter: @secretmovieclub or Facebook: @secretmovieclub35mm
You can also subscribe to our weekly email newsletter at secretmovieclub.com or by writing to us at community@secretmovieclub.com and using the header “SUBSCRIBE ME TO NEWSLETTER”.
HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU IF I HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS:
You can always email us at community@secretmovieclub.com with any other questions, concerns, thoughts, recommendations.