Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

(When the Civil War began, an extreme right-wing group arrivedin Huesca, fully armed, to arrest him. He managed to slip awaysomehow, so they arrested his wife and announced that they wouldexecute her if Acin didn't give himself up. He surrendered the followingday, and the Fascists shot both of them.) When I was readyto begin filming, I asked Pierre Unik to come down from Paris andbe my assistant. Eli Lotar was my cameraman, on a machine we hadto borrow from Yves Allegret. Since we had only twenty thousandpesetas, we had to do it all in a month. Four thousand went on asecondhand Fiat, which I repaired myself each time it broke down.We stayed in a spartan, ten-room hotel which had been built insidea desanctified convent called Las Batuecas and which had been emptysince Mendizabal promulgated his anticlerical laws in the nineteenthcentury. We left for the shoot every morning before dawn, drovetwo hours in the car, then continued on foot, toting our equipmenton our backs.Those graceless mountains fascinated me, as did the poverty andthe intelligence of their inhabitants. I was amazed at their fierceattachment to this sterile country, this "breadless" earth. In fact,fresh bread was just about unheard of, except when someone broughtback a dried loaf from Andalusia.Our budget ran out on the last day of the shoot, and I did theediting myself, at a kitchen table in Madrid. Since we had no Moviola,I looked at the film through a magnifying glass and spliced thesegments together as best I could. Some good footage must havebeen tossed into the garbage simply because I couldn't see it clearly!The first screening took place at the Cine de la Prensa, where, sinceit was a silent film, I narrated it myself at a microphone. Thinkingof his investment, Acin kept pushing me to do some publicity, SOwe decided to hold a private showing for Maration, an eminentscholar and president of the governing council of Las Hurdes. At thesame time, powerful right-wing forces were putting pressure on theyoung Republic. Each passing day brought news of another upheaval,another "incident," like some of Prime de Rivera's Falangists firing