Synopses & Reviews
Review
“The period in Luis Buñuel’s career between 1930 (L’Âge d’or) and 1938, when he left Europe and went into exile, is the one we know the least about. From Gubern (an expert in Spanish cinema) and Hammond (an expert on Surrealism), we learn a great deal we didn’t know about his filmmaking, and about how it was intertwined with his politics.”—Bill Krohn, author of Luis Buñuel: Chimera
Review
“An indispensable book for the Buñuel scholar and important to those interested in the history of Spanish film, the in-workings of the Surrealist movement, and the European left-wing political scene from the late twenties through the Spanish Civil War.”—Julie Jones, University of New Orleans
Review
“Notable for original research, careful scholarship and new light [it] throw[s]. . . . Absorbing reading for anyone interested in the life and times of Luis Buñuel.”—Cineaste
Review
“Gubern and Hammond excel at balancing Buñuel’s self-interested accounts with those of others. . . . This beautifully produced volume represents a major contribution to a Buñuel scholarship. Summing Up: Highly recommended.”—CHOICE
Synopsis
The turbulent years of the 1930s were of profound importance in the life of Spanish film director Luis Buñuel (1900–1983). He joined the Surrealist movement in 1929 but by 1932 had renounced it and embraced Communism. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), he played an integral role in disseminating film propaganda in Paris for the Spanish Republican cause.
Luis Buñuel: The Red Years, 1929–1939 investigates Buñuel’s commitment to making the politicized documentary Land without Bread (1933) and his key role as an executive producer at Filmófono in Madrid, where he was responsible in 1935–36 for making four commercial features that prefigure his work in Mexico after 1946. As for the republics of France and Spain between which Buñuel shuttled during the 1930s, these became equally embattled as left and right totalitarianisms fought to wrest political power away from a debilitated capitalism.
Where it exists, the literature on this crucial decade of the film director’s life is scant and relies on Buñuel’s own self-interested accounts of that complex period. Román Gubern and Paul Hammond have undertaken extensive archival research in Europe and the United States and evaluated Buñuel’s accounts and those of historians and film writers to achieve a portrait of Buñuel’s “Red Years” that abounds in new information.
Synopsis
The land that is now called Wisconsin has a place in weather history. Its climate has ranged from tropical to polar over hundreds of millions of years and even today, that s the seeming difference between July and January here. And Wisconsinites have played key roles in advancing the science of meterology and climatology: Increase Lapham helped found the National Weather Service in the nineteenth century; Eric Miller was the first to broadcast regular weather reports on the radio in the 1920s; Verner Suomi pioneered tracking weather by satellite; and Reid Bryson has been a leader in studying global climate change.
Wisconsin's Weather and Climate is written for weather buffs, teachers, students, outdoor enthusiasts, and those working in fields, lakes, and forests for whom the weather is a daily force to be reckoned with. It examines the physical features of Wisconsin that shape the state s climate topography, mid-latitude location, and proximity to Lakes Superior and Michigan and meteorological phenomena that affect climate, such as atmospheric circulation and air mass frequency. Authors Joseph M. Moran and Edward J. Hopkins trace the evolution of methods of weather observation and forecasting that are so important for agriculture and Great Lakes commerce, and they explain how Wisconsin scientists use weather balloons, radar, and satellites to improve forecasting and track climate changes. They take readers through the seasonal changes in weather in Wisconsin and give an overview of what past climate changes might tell us about the future.
Appendices provide climatic data for Wisconsin, including extremes of temperature, snowfall, and precipitation at selected stations in the state. The authors also list sources for further information.
Vignettes throughout the book provide fascinating weather lore:
o Why there are cacti in Wisconsin
o The famous Green Bay Packers Dallas Cowboys "Ice Bowl" game of 1967
o The Army Signal Corps ban on the word tornado
o Advances in snow-making technology
o The decline of the Great Lakes ice industry
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About the Author
Román Gubern is professor at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona and has been a guest researcher at MIT. He is author of numerous screenplays for film and television and of more than forty books on cinema, popular culture, and semiotics, including 1936–1939: La Guerra de España en la pantalla. Paul Hammond is author and editor of several books, including The Shadow and Its Shadow: Surrealist Writings on the Cinema. Among his many translations is A Panorama of American Film Noir by Borde and Chaumeton. Both authors live in Barcelona.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 The Militant Surrealist
2 The Production of L'Âge d'or
3 A Fecund Scandal
4 A Brief Stay in Hollywood: November 1930 to February 1931
5 The Coming of the Spanish Second Republic
6 A Stormy Year: May 1931 to June 1932
7 Time-Serving at Paramount-Joinville
8 The Mutations of L'Âge d'or and Other Projects
9 From Las Hurdes to Terre sans pain
10 Dubbing at Warner Bros.
11 Commerce, Art, and Politics
12 Filmófono
13 The Outbreak of the Spanish Civil War
14 A Two-Year Mission in Paris: September 1936 to September 1938
Notes
Bibliography
Index