Cinema of Spain the industry; 44 of the 58 films released up until that point had been produced there. The rural drama "La aldea maldita" ("The Cursed Village") (Florian Rey, 1929) was a hit in Paris, where, at the same time, Buñuel and Dalí premiered "Un chien andalou" ("An Andalusian Dog"). "Un chien andalou" has become one of the most well-known "avant-garde" films of that era. By 1931, the introduction of audiophonic foreign productions had hurt the Spanish film industry to the point where only a single title was released that year. In 1935, Manuel Casanova founded the "Compañía Industrial Film Española S.A."
Art film make "art films", and film critics did not use the term "art film". However, there were films that had sophisticated aesthetic objectives, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928) and "Vampyr" (1932), surrealist films such as Luis Buñuel's "Un chien andalou" (1929) and "L'Âge d'Or" (1930), or even films dealing with political and current-event relevance such as Sergei Eisenstein's famed and influential masterpiece "Battleship Potemkin". The U.S. film "" (1927) by German Expressionist director F. W. Murnau uses distorted art design and groundbreaking cinematography to create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world rich with symbolism and imagery.