FEATURE FILM

Carlos Saura's film a tribute to Luis Buñuel

	Ernesto Alterio as Salvador Dali, Adrià Collado as Federico Garcia Lorca and Pedro Arquillué as Luis Buñuel.

Luis Buñuel, the famous filmmaker from Aragón, was born in the year 1900. His centenary was marked by a variety of initiatives in Spain, but one looks set to be a unique visual reminder of the great cinematographer.

Buñuel's friend and fellow countryman, Director Carlos Saura, conceived an unusual tribute - a fiction film called Buñuel and King Solomon's Table, in which Buñuel takes the lead part. Together with Agustín Sanchez Vidal, Saura wrote a free script in which Buñuel envisages the film he would like to have made in his youth in Toledo with his friends - the artist Salvador Dali and the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. In the early, realistic part of the film, Buñuel is involved with film work and meetings. As the film progresses, he writes a script and dreams about the plot in which he leads Lorca and Dali in an extraordinary journey through Toledo's subterranean world in search of King Solomon's mythical table.

Director Carlos Saura (right) and DP José Luis López Linares (AEC).

Director of Photography, José Luis López Linares, had worked with Saura on three previous occasions and when offered the role of DP on Buñuel and King Solomon's Table, was delighted. "I was familiar with Carlos' reputation for classical imagery and his photographic skills," notes Linares, who shot Buñuel's movie with two Moviecam Compact cameras fitted with 14mm - 100mm Ultraprime lenses and a Tiffen daylight filter.

Most of the exteriors in the eleven-week shoot comprised very narrow streets near Toledo Cathedral and the scenes were shot in hot, harsh sunlight at f8 or f11. For these and other bright exteriors, Linares used Eastman EXR 50D stock (7245). He particularly remembers one night in Toledo. "The actors were supposed to appear through fog. We created the fog easily enough, but it wouldn't stay longer than a few seconds because of a strong wind that kept changing direction. We eventually had to film the sequence back in the studio." When he wanted contrast between natural and mixed lighting conditions, Kodak Vision 250D film (7246) was the choice. "I really like the way the Kodak daylight stocks handle different colour 'temperatures' - I often mix lights in a shot, such as daylight and tungsten. For the studio interiors I used mostly Kodak Vision 800T (7289) for its sharpness. I like the contrast ratio and the way it handles the blacks; its extra speed gives me more stops when I overexpose," comments Linares.

Kodak Vision 500T film (7279) was selected for the shots incorporating substantial post-production. "Carlos likes working with special effects so we are incorporating more than we originally planned. Our 8-metre high sets are being digitally extended to 40 metres and there are some unusual surreal sequences with Dali. One of the last scenes of the actors was shot against a blue screen, and a gigantic mechanical woman - like the one in the film Metropolis - is being added digitally," he says.

A huge warehouse was utilised to build an 80-metre set of Toledo Cathedral interior. The 'stone' Cathedral walls were created with a large number of painted 8 x 4 metre translucent canvasses that were lit from behind. "They gave a very strange and unusual luminous effect, as if the 'stone' reflected the light," says Linares, who used a mixer to control and adjust the 400kW studio lights.

Buñuel and King Solomon's Table, Carlos Saura's tribute in memory of his friend and fellow filmmaker Buñuel, is produced by Rioja Films and co-funded by Centre Promotor de la Image (Spain), Castelao Productiones (Spain), Road Movies (Germany) and AltaVista Films (Mexico). It is due for release in autumn 2001.

Data File

Buñuel and King Solomon's Table

Executive Producer - Jose Antonio Romero
Production Supervisor - Montserrat Bou
Director - Carlos Saura
Director of Photography - José Luis López Linares

A Rioja Films Production

José Luis López Linares

Linares studied at the London International Film School. He has been a DP since 1987 and has over twenty films to his credit. Since 1996 he has also directed and produced films.

Credits include:
AS DIRECTOR/PRODUCER -
Extranjeros de sí mismos, A propósito de Buñuel, El valor de educar (TV), Lorca (1998 EMMY nomination) and Asaltar los cielos.

AS DP -
Calle 54 (with Fernando Trueba), Pajarico (with Carlos Saura), Marathon (with Carlos Saura), L'homme qui a perdu son ombre (with Alain Tanner) and Madregilda (with F.Regueiro).