Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is preparing to start her life as a nun when she is sent, somewhat unwillingly, to visit to her aging uncle, Don Jaime (Fernando Rey). He supports her; but the two have met only once. Jaime thinks Viridinia resembles his dead wife. Virdinia has secretly despised this man all her life and finds her worst fears proven when Jaime grows determined to seduce his pure niece. Viridinia becomes undone as her uncle upends the plans she had made to join the convent.
* The screening on Thursday, January 25 was followed by a ROUND TABLE discussion between Rob Stone, Amparo Martínez Herranz and Pete William Evans.
Rob Stone is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Spanish Cinema (Longman, 2001), Julio Medem (Manchester University Press, 2007), co-author of Basque Cinema: A Cultural and Political History (I.B.Tauris, 2015) and co-editor of The Unsilvered Screen: Surrealism on Film (Wallflower, 2007) and The Companion to Luis Buñuel (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013)
Peter William Evans is Emeritus Professor of Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. His research and publications are mainly on Spanish cinema and classical Hollywood cinema. He is the author of The Films of Luis Buñuel: Subjectivity and Desire (Oxford University Press, 1995), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (BFI, 1996) and the editor of Spanish Cinema: The Auteurist Tradition (Oxford University Press, 1999).
Amparo Martínez Herranz is Professor of History of Art and Film in the University of Zaragoza in Spain. Her research focuses on the films of Luis Buñuel, the history of cinema in Aragon and Spain, and the links between cinema, literature and art. She is the author of several studies of the history of cinema in Zaragoza and edited La España de Viridiana (The Spain of Viridiana) (Zaragoza University Press, 2013).