Archived: Forgotten

Forgotten

Los olvidados, feature film, crime drama, Mexico, 1950

DIRECTED BY: Luis Buñuel

ROLE:

Estela Inda (Pedro's mother) Miguel Inclán (Mr. Carmelo) Alfonso Mejía (Pedro) Roberto Cobo Alma Delia Fuentes

SCRIPT: Luis Alcoriza, Luis Buñuel

PHOTOGRAPHY: Gabriel Figueroa

MUSIC: Rodolfo Halffter, Gustavo Pittaluga

EDITING: Carlos Savage, Luis Buñuel

CONTENT:

A poor suburb of Ciudad de Mexico. Juvenile Jaibo, a fugitive from a correctional facility, reunites his teenage gang and the first ‘action’ they perform is an attack on a blind street musician who is beaten and his instrument smashed. Jaibo cries out for revenge on the one whose betrayal ended up in the penitentiary, and that is allegedly the boy Julián. With the help of Pedro, a member of his gang, Jaibo tracks down Julián, kills and robs him, and shares the money with Pedro. Pedra is then arrested for the theft actually committed by Jaibo…

Forgotten are Buñuel's most prominent film from the quantitatively most fruitful, Mexican phase of his career, an uncompromisingly direct and unsentimental portrayal of miserable social conditions and the associated mental cruelty that not only does not go unnoticed by the most vulnerable – children and minors, but is particularly prominent. With its realistic-naturalistic foundations, shooting in real locations with naturalists and interest in the (lowest) social strains, the film is connected with the then current and world-famous poetics of Italian neorealism, but Buñuel himself did not like this connection that European critics insisted on. . In an essay published in 1953, entitled Poetry and Film, he wrote: "Neorealist reality is incomplete, conventional and, above all, rational. Poetry, mystery, everything that completes and increases the tangible reality, is completely absent. Decades later, filmmaker Robert Sklar highlighted the Surrealist moments of the Forgotten: "a boy throws an egg at the camera lens, where it breaks and leaks," and a scene of a boy's dream in slow-motion. The initial reaction of Mexican critics and audiences to the film was extremely negative, it was declared 'anti-Mexican' (eg the famous painter Frida Kahlo refused to talk to Buñuel after the premiere), but after his great success in Cannes, where he won the award for best director and the FIPRESCI International Critics Association Award, accompanied by laudas by famous artists such as Marc Chagall, André Breton, Jacques Prevert, Jean Cocteau (the film came to Cannes with the help of leading Mexican poet, diplomat and future Nobel laureate Octavius Paz), the situation changed (Mexican version of the Oscars) for best film, and Silver Ariels for best director, original story and screenplay (Buñuel and his frequent collaborator from the Mexican phase Luis Alcoriza), photography (famous cameraman Gabriel Figureoa), set design, editing, supporting actress, and for the best young actor or actress, the best children’s actor or actress and for the best sound. The world's most prestigious film magazine Cahiers du cinéma chose it as the fourth best film of the year, behind Jean Renoir's River, The Diary of the Village Priest Robert Bresson and The Miracles in Milan by Vittorio De Sica, all the pinnacles of film art such as The Forgotten. In 2003, they were included in the UNESCO register Memory of the World, and in 2019, the restored copy was shown in the Cannes Classics program of the world's most prestigious film festival.

B / W, 80 ′

Portraits: Surrealist film by Luis Buñuel

As part of a major retrospective of Spanish director Luis Buñuel, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, by September 30, we will show 20 titles made in the period 1929-1977. Buñuel is an author of superb, original and recognizable opus and style, a director who perfectly surrealist symbolism fits into the overall structure of the work and permeates it with a plot, and a strong critic of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy, especially the meaninglessness and futility of religious dogmas and human constraints.

The program was realized in cooperation with the Embassy of Spain in Zagreb and Cineteca Nacional México.

All films have Croatian subtitles.

Ticket price 20 kuna, for members 10 kuna.

Tickets can be purchased at the box office, which opens one hour before the first screening of the day and closes after the start of the last screening of the day …