„L’âge d’or” – the Masterpiece of Provocation

Marcin Giżycki

mgizycki@hotmail.com
Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7525-0205

Abstract

Ninety years ago, on 31st June 1930, a private screening of Luis Buñuel’s film L’âge d’or took place in a Parisian mansion of Marie-Laure and Charles de Noailles. At the end of November of the same year, the film officially premiered at Studio 28 in Paris. A few days later, on 3rd December, inkwells and other dangerous objects were thrown at the screen, and one of the biggest brawls in the history of cinema started. Everything in the movie, including the music carefully chosen by the director, was provocative, and the resulting tumult was well planned and it pleased André Breton and other surrealists enormously. Giżycki recalls these facts and deliberates whether this act of provocation still resonates in present-day world.


Keywords:

Luis Buñuel, surrealism, provocation

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Published
2020-05-25

Cited by

Giżycki, M. (2020) “„L’âge d’or” – the Masterpiece of Provocation”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (109), pp. 195–199. doi: 10.36744/kf.257.

Authors

Marcin Giżycki 
mgizycki@hotmail.com
Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7525-0205

Film and art historian, critic, filmmaker. Professor at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw (Poland). Senior Lecturer at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence (USA). Artistic Director of “Animator” – International Animated Film Festival in Poznan (Poland). Former editor-in-chief of Animafilm – the ASIFA quarterly. He has published eight books and around 400 articles on film and art in Polish and foreign publications. He has also made a number of documentary, live action, experimental, and animated films in Poland and the USA. In 2016 he received the Award for the Outstanding Contribution to Animation Studies at Animafest, the World Festival of Animated Film in Zagreb (Croatia).



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