Publisher description

"An important contribution to film theory. . . . Williams has a fluid, assured style. She is clearly in command of the subject. She's made a strong and original argument for the psychoanalytic basis of Surrealism."--James Monaco, author of The New Wave

This collection proceeds chronologically, from poetry and short stories written in Buñuel's youth in Spain to an essay written in 1980, not long before his death.

Tiergarten is Berlin's oldest park, with more than five hundred acres of woodland in the heart of the city. Before it was absorbed by the city, the area that became Tiergarten was a naturally occurring forest. Throughout its history, it was used as royal hunting grounds and as a landscaped public park, and--in the years of hardship following World War II-- an area where trees were felled for firewood, before changing social and political circumstances and the growing ecological movement led to measures to restore and replant the vast public space. Thus, Tiergarten has become not only a very popular place of recreation but as well a biotope of extraordinarily high biodiversity. Generously illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs, Tiergarten, Landscape of Transgression takes readers through the history of the park, with an eye toward exploring it as a radical spatial expression--a space where humans and other species and conflicting histories coexist in close proximity, and a model for future environments in areas of intense urbanization. Born of a recent symposium staged by the Technische Universit t Berlin, the book brings together twelve essays with a range of archival documents, including newspaper articles, maps, reports, plans, and photographs.

Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) was one of the truly great film-makers of the twentieth century. Shaped by a repressive Jesuit education and a bourgeois family background, he reacted against both, escaped to Paris, and was soon embraced by André Breton's official surrealist group. His early films are his most aggressive and shocking, the slicing of the eyeball in Un Chien andalou (1929) one of the most memorable episodes in the history of cinema. The Forgotten Ones (1950) and He (1952), made in Mexico, were followed, from 1960, in Spain and France, by the films for which he is best known: Viridiana (1961), Belle de jour (1966), Tristana (1970), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977). Gwynne Edwards analyses the films in the context of Buñuel's personal obsessions - sex, bourgeois values, and religion - suggesting that the film-maker experienced a degree of sexual inhibition surprising in a surrealist. GWYNNE EDWARDS is Professor of Spanish at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

Presenting a fascinating collection of the most beloved works by French poet and writer Pierre Louÿs. He was most famous for following lesbian and classical themes in his writings. Louÿs is celebrated as a writer who aimed to "express pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection." Contents include: Woman and Puppet The New Pleasure Byblis Lêda Immortal Love The Artist Triumphant The Hill of Horsel