Luis Buñuel

Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel, 1968
Born	Luis Buñuel Portolés (1900-02-22)February 22, 1900 Calanda, Teruel, Spain
Died	July 29, 1983(1983-07-29) (aged 83) Mexico City, Mexico
Citizenship	Spain (renounced in 1949) Mexico
Occupation	Filmmaker
Years active	1929–1977
Spouse(s)	Jeanne Rucar (1934–1983; his death)

Spain (renounced in 1949)

Luis Buñuel Portolés (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈlwis βuˈɲwel portoˈles]; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish filmmaker who worked in Spain, Mexico and France.

When Luis Buñuel died at age 83, his obituary in the New York Times called him "an iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary who was a leader of avant-garde surrealism in his youth and a dominant international movie director half a century later". His first picture—made in the silent era—was called "the most famous short film ever made" by critic Roger Ebert, and his last film—made 48 years later—won him Best Director awards from the National Board of Review and the National Society of Film Critics. Writer Octavio Paz called Buñuel's work "the marriage of the film image to the poetic image, creating a new reality...scandalous and subversive".

Often associated with the surrealist movement of the 1920s, Buñuel created films from the 1920s through the 1970s. His work spans two continents, three languages, and an array of genres, including experimental film, documentary, melodrama, satire, musical, erotica, comedy, romance, costume dramas, fantasy, crime film, adventure, and western. Despite this variety, filmmaker John Huston believed that, regardless of genre, a Buñuel film is so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable, or, as Ingmar Bergman put it, "Buñuel nearly always made Buñuel films".