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A psychoanalytic study of Buñuel’s cinema

University of British Columbia

The objective of this thesis is to attempt a semiotic- psychoanalytic reading of the cinema of Bunuel. For this proposal we have selected three films of the director, An Andalusian dog, Land without bread and The obscure object of desire. The criteria that has led to this particular selection of films takes into account a wide range of variables to be contrasted to the psychoanalytical determinants that, we propose, play a decisive role in the form and content of the productions. The different variables present in these films are: genre (Surrealist, documentary and traditional narratives), thematics (surrealistic, erotic and socio-etnographic study), time of creativity (early adulthood, senility) and socio-cultural conditions of production (Spain, France). Our intended psychoanalytic study focuses on the creator's unconscious motivations that regulate, in a rather compulsive way, the poetics of love or life indistinctively present in all these cinematic creations. In order to reach to this interpretative stance, we will follow the different methodological steps of a semiotic reading of the texts that will discern their cinematographically denotative and connotative devises and contents. This way of illuminating art through psychoanalysis is reflected on the Freudian idea that creativity constitutes one of the mysterious human manifestations in which the instincts channel their conflicts in a socially disguised way, in order to pursue the desired gratification.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-08-04

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/11585

Hispanic Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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