The Spanish newspaper El País made public last Sunday an unknown 8-minute film by noted Spanish-Mexican auteur Luis Buñuel which was made in the U.S. in the early 1940s, when he lived in New York City. The short film, which the newspaper credits its source to Filmoteca Española, features some domestic scenes with his family and friends, and was shot on Buñuel's apartment on East 83rd Street in Manhattan, on Central Park, and in a country house in Maine (which according to the newspaper might have belonged to Alexander Calder, a friend of the filmmaker).
The film features Buñuel's small children and his wife Jeanne, as well as his Spanish friends Juan Negrín and Rosita Díaz Gimeno. Whilst in New York, Buñuel worked at The Department of Film of The Museum of Modern Art, where he mostly supervised and edited documentaries for Latin America, commissioned by the Committee on Inter-American Affairs, headed by Nelson Rockefeller.
This same week, the house where Buñuel lived with his family in Mexico City from 1952 until his death in 1983, was opened as Casa Buñuel, a cultural space dedicated to the filmmaker. The new cultural venue was inaugurated with a special exhibit titled "Viridiana.50", celebrating the 50th anniversary of the premiere of the controversial film and displays among other objects the Palm d'Or that the film won at the Cannes Film Festival in 1961. Mexican actress Silvia Pinal, who played the main role in the film and worked with the director in other films was in attendance to the opening of Casa Buñuel.
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