If the forthcoming frigid, dark New Hampshire winter inspires bleak and forlorn feelings, Pedro Almodovar prescribes the art of cinema for your wintertime woes. The Spanish auteur's sentiments are readily apparent in his extensive collection of campy, vibrant and sensational films -- several of which are being re-released by Sony Pictures Classics and brought to Hanover in "Viva Pedro," the Loew Thursday Series for Winter term.
Eight of Almodovar's most critically acclaimed films from the past two decades are being presented on restored 35mm prints in the traveling series, which was released in New York and Los Angeles in August and has been making its way across the nation ever since. The series will run at the Loew Cinema through Winter term and will conclude with a screening of Almodovar's latest critical success, "Volver."
The last 25 years have witnessed the ascent of Pedro Almodovar to the forefront of Spanish cinema and beyond as he continues to garner critical and popular success around the world. His trademark elements of melodrama, scandal and compelling characters, usually female and drawn from the middle and lower classes of Spanish society, have been woven into stories by the writer-director that rise to more elaborate cinematic levels with each anticipated release.
Almodovar was born to a large and impoverished peasant family in the La Mancha region of Spain. After attending Catholic school he moved to Madrid at 16, penniless but determined to study film. General Franco had closed the film school, so an official education was impossible, but Almodovar worked with theater groups and wrote for underground culture magazines. In the late 1970s, the promising young director became a star of "La Movida," the growing pop culture movement in Madrid. Almodovar was eventually able to save up for a Super-8 camera and released his first feature film, "Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del monton" ("Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls on the Heap"), in 1980.
The success of this initial release allowed Almodovar to start his own production company and write and direct films full time. Since then, Pedro Almodovar has become a global phenomenon. He draws much of his creative material from his own life, especially his ambivalence toward his home country and his Catholic education. Deconstruction of middle class Spanish values and the provocative elements of the urban lower classes -- including drugs, prostitution, reckless housewives, homosexuality and gifted (but undiscovered) children -- tend to accompany the metaphorical and symbolic techniques the filmmaker employs to portray his typically circular story lines.
Almodovar's impoverished family provided considerable inspiration, while his characteristically strong female characters are largely based on his own mother, who made a number of cameos in her son's films until her death in 1999. The sexual abuse Almodovar witnessed while at Catholic school is the basis for 2004's critically acclaimed "La mala educacion" ("Bad Education"), which took him ten years to write because it was so intensely autobiographical.
The latter film, along with 2002's "Hable con ella" ("Talk To Her") and 1999's Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning "Todo sobre mi madre" ("All About My Mother") have enjoyed tremendous popularity in the United States and introduced Almodovar to a Western audience. The "Viva Pedro" series brings all of these, along with five earlier gems, to the Loew. Several of the films in the series, though acclaimed in Almodovar's native Spain, have never before been released stateside either theatrically or on DVD. All are enticing offerings sure to satisfy Almodovar apostles and introduce the celebrated auteur to an entirely new audience.
"Almodovar really has a mass-market appeal, which is not the case with some other European directors. He strikes a balance between the art house and the multiplex," said Tyson Kubota '07, Director of the Dartmouth Film Society. "He's one of the only directors whose name connotes a certain type of movie -- a personal style involving comedy and pathos."
"Viva Pedro" culminates with a screening of "Volver" on Thursday, March 1st. Tickets go on sale at the Loew box office 30 minutes prior to show time.
