Tierra Sin Pan (The Land Without Bread)

It almost seems futile to add to the vast confabulation this film has generated since its emergence onto the film scene in 1932. Unfortunately, this fact makes it hard to try and watch Tierra Sin Pan with an open mind. To try to pretend I have not read any of the critiques or analyses is an impossible test of the critical mind, however, being forthright about it may at least clarify my perspective. Hopefully, it also provides a background as to why I'm less inclined to discuss the film's content as much as it's structure and place in documentary film's history.

In Lucien Taylor's "Iconophobia," he presents the arguments of famous film critics who believe that film "imposes itself through temporary suspension of disbelief" (Taylor 35). Critics such as Metz, Bloch and Hastrup believe "filmmakers seem not to recognize their works as constructed" (Taylor 35). Tierra Sin Pan seems to exemplify the opposite. Just as the genre of Surrealism was a reaction towards a constructed, methodical, logically ordered world, so too were Surrealist films a reaction to the rigid idea of film's rationality and strict confinement of reality. Tierra Sin Pan did this not by some radical means of experimental filmic approaches, but by employing the very epitomizing methods that have been "holding back" (ethnographic) documentary in the first place. Banuel used a strictly "Voice of God" narration to construct the reality of film, mimicking the pretext of other films before or of the time that seemed to keep ethnographic film's viability as a legitimate venue for capturing cultural understanding. This produced a sardonic and satirical stand against documentary's leading criticism. As it turns out, filmmakers are aware of the constructed nature of the medium, and what's more, their role in that construction as well as the audience's perception not just through "suspension of disbelief" but in relation to other comparable texts (ie. films or writings).

It is a film that implores the audience to think about the action of viewing films, to be aware of the constructiveness of meaning making. There is a disconnect between the signifiers and the signified as a choice of the filmmaker, and that is the point of departure that a critical viewer will have to discover, and construct meaning on his or her own.

Tierra Sin Pan (Luis Bañuel 1932)

Taylor, Lucien. 1996. Iconophobia. Transition, no. 69: 64-88.