almodòvar

Born in the 50's in Calzada de Calatrava, province of Ciudad Real, legal party of Almagro and Archbishopric of Toledo. He migrated with his family to Extremadura when he was eight. There he went to Elementary and High School with the Salesians and Franciscans fathers. His bad religious education just taught him to loose his faith in God. By that time he starts compulsively going to the movies in Caceres."I was born in a very bad time for Spain, but a good one indeed for the film industry. I'm talking about the fifties. I was still a child when I first stepped into a hometown theater. It looked sort of like the one portrayed in some sequences of "El Espíritu de la colmena" -if my memory serves me right, there is a theater in that film by Erice"."Apart from the chair, the first time I went to a theater I also took a can of coal with me to fight the cold during the projection. In time, the heat of that makeshift hearth has become the paradigm of what movies meant to me back then". He moved to Madrid when he was sixteen. Alone, with neither family nor money but with a very specific goal: to study and make movies. Franco had just closed the National School of Cinema so, since it wasn't possible to learn the language (the form) he decided he decides to study the basis, and starts living. Despite the dictatorship, a rural teen found in the Madrid of the late 60's the city, the culture and the freedom."I got used to reality (I assumed it, as one assumes the illness of someone he loves): Madrid is not just luxury and fun, cities have suburbs and pollution, noise and misery, and their greatness resides in those imperfections sometimes ".After taking up several temporary jobs he gets a "serious" position in Telefonica and earns enough money to buy his first Super 8 camera. The two years he spends working at the Administration department provide his actual training."I grew up, suffered, gained weight and developed myself in Madrid. And I underwent many of these changes in time with the city. My life and films are bound to Madrid, like the heads and tails of the same coin ".Since early in the morning he's in touch with a social class he couldn't have known better any other way; the Spanish middle class in the beginning of the consumer age with all its drama and misery -a hell of a vein for a future narrator. But he's not satisfied just with living these years, and he shares his administration position with other occupations:In the late seventies he writes comic scripts, contributes to underground magazines like "Star", "Vibora" and "Vibraciones" with stories and opinions. In 1972 he begins the non-stop shooting of his first Super-8 shorts and takes them from Madrid to Barcelona."I began succeeding as a Super-8 filmmaker but I also experienced the rejection from the genuinely modern for the first time. Ever since those early moments I start feeling isolated by the groups I belong by nature to".His shorts, without sound (he would dub them himself in time with the projection), become his school for filmmaking. He combines his early approach to cinema with his literature projects. Among other things, he publishes a short novel ("Fuego en las entrañas"), porn photo-novels like "Toda Tuya" several press contributions: El Pais, Diario 16, La Luna... Patty Diphusa (Flabber Gasted) was created for this last -her memories are published periodically and have been compared to Lorelei's, by Anita Loos."The moment I grab my Super-8 camera, my first intention is that of the fable writer or storyteller ". At the same time, Pedro joins the prestige drama club Los Goliardos, where he plays his first professional roles and meets Carmen Maura. Together with McNamara he starts a parody punk-glam-rock band. He keeps writing stories that are eventually published in compilation volumes ("El sueño de la razón"). This atmosphere sets the background for his first commercial feature film: "Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón" (1980), a project originally created by Pedro for a photo-novel entrusted by "El Vibora" magazine. Its name was "General Erections"."Having worked so with my Super-8, Carmen Maura and some other friends from Los Goliardos decided I should take one step forward and make my first film in 16mm".Felix Rotateta, another actor from Los Goliardos and future director, became allies with Carmen Maura to raise financing for "Pepi..." Half a million pesetas, a team of volunteers and shooting on weekends are the conditions in which the film is made in… one year! Such lack of means produces a creative freedom unusual to Spain for the time. "When a film has faults it's considered a faulty film, but when it has so many, faulty becomes stylish "."Pepi..." became immediately a cult movie. It toured the independent circuits and then spent four years on the late night showing of the Alphaville Theater in Madrid.It would be the Alphaville theater itself who produced his next film: "Laberinto de Pasiones" (1982). This film introduces the topics Pedro shall develop later. It also carries a special significance representing the Madrid of the late 70's and early 80's with its particular movida. The film was well accepted by the public -Pedro Almodovar is already a reference for Spanish filmmaking.One year later he shoots "Entre Tinieblas" (1983), produced by Tesauro (businessman Herve Hachuel's company). This is the first time he approaches the topic of religion, which is to be found in most of his later work. "Entre Tinieblas" also means the first collaboration with Chus Lampreave, one of his most emblematic actresses.In 1984 he shoots, again with Tesauro producing it, his career's most naturist and social film: "¿Que he hecho yo para merecer esto?" The film enjoyed international spreading and great acceptance. "An absolutely marvelous black comedy. Simply a small master piece", wrote "The New York Times".With the success of his last movie, Almodovar's films make a sudden change, one affecting both its vision and subject. This is the first time he shares the writing of the screenplay (with Jesus Ferrero). "Matador" (1985) becomes his "weirdest" film; it draws away from the naturalism and humor of his previous work and turns into a beautiful fable about death, sex and guilt. The film provokes great unrest and different opinions in Spain. However, it's very well received outside, especially in Latin America.Pedro Almodovar shoots "La ley del deseo" in 1986. It's the first time he produces one of films together with his brother Agustin. Benefiting from Pilar Miro's law of 1983, they create their own production company, "El Deseo". Despite the success of his previous filmography and the new law of cinematography, "La Ley del Deseo" finds it hard to get official granting and becomes a financial challenge for the newly created company. And it's this challenge and the freedom it conveys that make "La Ley del Deseo" one of the author's and Spanish cinema's freest films for the time.In 1987 "Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios" sets the stepping stone for Pedro's work. This white comedy goes worldwide and deserves the public's and critics' acclaim. It gets up to fifty national and international awards and an Oscar nomination, breaking ticket-box records both in Spain and outside.Pedro travels restlessly throughout 1988, tasting success' advantages and disadvantages. To escape from it all he settles back in Madrid, and as his Women's uproar develops with the Oscar nomination, he shoots a new movie: "Atame" (1989). This work involves the breaking-off with his reference actress, Carmen Maura, and the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with another great diva of the Spanish and European cinema: Victoria Abril. The film's a blockbuster, half a million people see it.But scandal and controversy marked its U.S. release. The MPAA (Motion Pictures Association of America), the institution in charge of the films' rating, margined its distribution with the stigmata of an X. Backed by the film's distribution company (Miramax), Pedro and other victims of American Puritanism filed a stubborn legal battle. The result of it was the birth of a new rating, NC17, applicable to those films of explicit nature previously regarded unfairly as pornographic. The movie weakened with all this controversy. In 1990 Pedro finishes the screenplay he began while shooting "¡Átame!". The title is taken from an old project, "Tacones Lejanos". An actual interpretative tour de force for two essential actresses of the "almodovarian universe": Marisa Paredes and Victoria Abril, the pillars of a work dominated by the word. "Tacones..." is another instant success in Spain, France and Italy.After the melodramatic intensity of "Tacones...", Pedro takes another sudden turn in his career shooting one of his most unclassifiable movies: "Kika" (1993). It turns a choral film where each character belongs to a different film genre, thus generating a very free and heterodox movie. The public liked this, but the critics were lost /it couldn't have been any other way. In silence and with a much more intimate melodrama inside, "La flor de mi secreto" (1995) is his humblest film regarding certain formal aspects, and also one in which the understanding with its protagonist (and with Pedro) reaches sky-high limits. Leaving Almodovar's usual choral exercises aside, this is the story of a woman torn off by love and has a magnificent text very much followed by the entire international public."Carne Tremula" (1997) is closer to the thriller. Again, it tells the story of several characters seeking one another in time. 1999 is an essential year in Pedro's career as well as the perfect epilogue for this chronology. "Todo sobre mi madre"(1999) becomes an unprecedented success in Spanish cinema, not only in theaters but also in festivals and awards -including the awaited Oscar. The film goes worldwide and is acclaimed accordingly wherever shown. 2002 is the most incredible year for Pedro Almodóvar, and the reason is ‘Talk to her’. His movie that overcomes the levels of national and international success that seemed to have led to as high place as possible ‘All about my mother'. The whole press of the planet praises the movie and receives hundreds of important prizes, including the Oscar to The Best Original script, which wins in fight with companions as Martin Scorsese, beside being selected also for the Oscar to the Best Director - and without being the film selected by the Academy of Spanish Cinema for these prizes.In 2004, After developing several projects, which include to Antonio Banderas y Penélope Cruz among other great Spanish actors and from other countries, he decides to roll ‘La mala educación'.