On the occasion of the exhibition Viaje a la luna, we present a double feature of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou, and Marcel Dzama’s To Live on the Moon (For Lorca).

Written and directed by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, Un Chien Andalou, 1929, is a landmark of avant-garde cinema. Based on the convergence of two dreams—an eye being cut open (Buñuel) and a hand covered in ants (Dalí)—the film was conceived and shot in under a week. Composed of surreal, nonlinear scenes that defy narrative logic, it remains a work that continues to puzzle and provoke audiences to this day.

Upon its release, many observed a resemblance between one of the film’s protagonists and Federico García Lorca, whose close friendship with Buñuel and Dalí had by then deteriorated. Displeased with the perceived portrayal and inspired by the cinematic form, Lorca wrote Viaje a la luna, a film script he entrusted to Mexican artist Emilio Amero to direct—a project that ultimately remained unfinished.

Marcel Dzama’s To Live on the Moon (For Lorca) takes Lorca’s unrealized script as a departure point to trace the poet’s life, tragic death, and imagined resurrection. Created in 2023—nearly a century after Viaje a la luna was written—Dzama reinterprets its imagery to portray Lorca not only in death but reborn as the Moon itself. Structured in vignettes, the film follows Lorca’s journey from life to death and into the cosmos, narrated through original songs and poems composed by Dzama.