(listen to one-minute excerpt on SoundCloud)

The Bells of Toledo is a passionate cinephile’s idiosyncratic homage to the great Spanish film maker Luis Buñuel. Best known perhaps for his scathing, surrealistic satires of middle class mores in films such as ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’  and The Exterminating Angel, Buñuel was a savage critic of the Catholic Church and the military dictatorship in Spain, and his subjects ranged from urban poverty to sexual fantasy. His career spanned fifty years years, and began with a shocking ‘bang’ – the avant garde short film he made with Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou (1929), infamous for its image of a woman’s eye being sliced open with a razor blade and well known to every student of film.

In The Bells Toledo, Australian artist and film academic John Conomos sends a fan’s love letter to a film maker who has kept him spellbound in the front stalls for more than forty years.

Writer: John Conomos
Performers: Virginia Baxter, Ruben Fernandez; William Zappa
Sound engineer/technical producer: Russell Stapleton
Producer: Tony MacGregor

The Bells of Toledo was commissioned by the Features and Documentaries Unit of ABC Radio National, and will be broadcast on Radio Eye, ABC Radio National.  Saturday, 4 October 2008. Listen to the programme here.

© ABC Radio 2008
© John Conomos 2008.