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A Rose burning into Little Ashes |
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Written by Marilys Horgue
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Picture it. Spain. Possibly the most irrational and most mystical country in the world. A brown-haired, eccentric and shy young Catalan from Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, enters the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid. The artistic scene doesn’t know yet that it’s about to discover the most crucial meeting of its history, from which will be born the main figures of the Surrealistic movement. Welcome to Little Ashes.
In 1922, Europe was still recovering from the post-World-War-I effects. Europe was reeling and the world as it was known was changed. The Dadaist movement was slowly dying while another grew. A few French artists aimed to start a new revolution, which would put an end to all the rules and academia in place in the artistic fields. But more specifically, it tends to combine arts and science. The 1920s were a time of new Freudian theories and the birth of the idea of the human being having a subconscious that is full of wild desires and passions. The Surrealist movement sought to express hidden feelings from the subconscious through art. Luis Buñuel joined the Surrealists in Paris, followed then by Salvador Dali, with whom he directed An Andalusian Dog and l’Âge d’Or.
It is in this atmosphere that Dali, an eccentric young man, enters the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid. In the progressive educational environment of the Residencia, he is exposed to some of the most influential philosophical and artistic theories of the day. Eighteen-year-old Dali wanted to enter the circle of students to which Federico Garcia Lorca and Buñuel belonged. Lorca’s fame was growing, and when filmmaker Buñuel moved to Paris, the relationship between Lorca and Dali deepened. In a society where homosexuality was taboo, Dali found himself confused about his new feelings towards his friend. On the other hand, Lorca had to suffer from the anguish of being famous and hiding his homosexuality from his family and the public.
Little Ashes, named after an early painting by Dali, is not so much about the exuberant Avida Dollars. At the age of 18, Dali was not the megalomaniac and mad character he built throughout the years he spent at the Residencia de Estudiantes . He was a very shy adolescent, confused by his own complex and his new feelings toward the poet he saw as the greatest phenomenon. Later, he often denied that they had such a relationship and professed his unconditional worship to his muse, Gala.
On the other hand, Lorca confirmed the relationship, which went to a physical level, yet Dali is well known for his deep disgust for physical contact. Where is the truth? Some documents seem to confirm the tryst, and what cannot be denied is their obvious love. It is even more obvious in the poem Oda a Salvador Dali written by the Lorca, dedicated to his unrequited love in 1926, shortly before the end of their relationship. This film won’t just stimulate the interest of the painter’s and poet’s admirers, but will at the same time show to a very large audience the hidden faces behind those eccentric and Surrealistic moustaches.
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STORY 
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