In 1926, Buñuel enrolled in a course at Jean Epstein‘s Académie du Cinéma acting school. He was influenced by Sergei Eisenstein‘s Battleship Potemkin, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau‘s The Last Man, and especially by Fritz Lang‘s film The Tired Death. It was during his time in Paris that he first entertained the idea of making films himself.

When a new institution of the League of Nations called Societé internationale de cooperation intellectuelle was to be founded in Paris in 1925, Buñuel applied for a secretary position, which he was eventually awarded. In 1923 he became involved with Sigmund Freud‘s psychoanalysis for the first time. During his studies he became acquainted with García Lorca and Salvador Dalí, among others. When he learned that Spanish lecturers in various humanities were being sought abroad, he changed subjects to study literature, philosophy, and history.

After graduating from high school in 1917, on the recommendation of Senator Don Bertolomé Esteban, he was admitted to the now famous Madrid Student Residence, where he began studying engineering at his father’s request. In 1915 he transferred to a state high school. Buñuel entered the Jesuit school Colegio del Salvador in Zaragoza in 1907. Under the care of his uncle, who was a priest, he gained insight into the French and Latin languages as a boy. In his autobiography, he described the society of his hometown as stubborn and marked by class distinctions. His father was the large landowner Leonardo Buñuel, and his mother was Maria Portoles, the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper. Luis Buñuel was born in the village of Calanda in Aragon, Spain, the eldest of seven children, but grew up mainly in Zaragoza. Only I continue to be a Catholic and an atheist. “The world is becoming more and more absurd. His first picture, Un Chien Andalou - made in the silent era - is still viewed regularly throughout the world and retains its power to shock the viewer, and his last film, The Obscure Object of Desire- made 48 years later - won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics. Having worked in Europe and North America, and in French and Spanish, Buñuel also directed films spanning various genres. Often associated with the surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel created films from the 1920s through the 1970s.

On February 22, 1900, Spanish, later naturalized Mexican, filmmaker Luis Buñuelwas born.

My last sigh bunuel