Tue, Aug 4, 2009

Foreign Films

Almodovar – A great Personality Who Understands the Trauma of Being Poor !

By admin



Pedro Almodovar, this is a Spanish name that has managed to create history. The initial family name of this person is Almodovar and the second name is Caballero. So, Pedro Almodovar Caballero was born on 25th September 1951. He is a Spanish film director and has managed to try his hand in screenwriting and a production section. Pedro Almodovar has managed to work with Al Pacino, Warren Beatty and Robert Bresson. He is the person that Spanish people will remember forever. Undoubtedly Almodovar is the most victorious and international Spanish filmmaker of his time. Most of his films are based on multifaceted narratives and Almodovar has the codes determined for melodrama with his films. Almodovar as a filmmaker is highly inclined towards pop culture, employing popular song tracks and humour and all of these things have been included in his films.

He has used strong colours and glossy décor for making his films, so that his movies can get a response straight away. Almodovar too bears some themes of life and among all these themes desire, passion, family and identity are the most important that have made him so popular. Themes from Almodovar were widespread and all these themes are clearly visible through his filmmaking. His films were drawing worldwide popularity and soon he evolved as a major figure in the world cinema platform. He has too initiated a Spanish film making company named El Deseo S.A with his younger brother. Agustin Almodovar is his younger brother who has produced all most all the film from Pedro.


Pedro Almodovar was born on 25th September 1951. He was born in Calzada de Calatrava, which is located in Spain. This was a small town of Ciudad Real. His family is large he has two brothers and two sisters. It was a poor family. Almodovar’s father used to work throughout the day by hauling barrels of wine with a mule. Almodovar’s mother was the person who took care of him and prepared his son as a teacher whose work is to teach the literacy to people in the village. He also worked as a letter reader and transcriber for many neighbours. When Pedro was just eight years old, his family backed him well and sent him for study at a religious school in the city of Caceres. His family was hoping that after completing study at the religious school, Pedro might someday become a priest. Soon after that his family enrolled him at Caceres. Here Pedro’s father started a gas station and his mother was involved in a bodega where she used to sell the wine prepared at home.
Caceres the city, seems to be more affectionate towards Almodovar. In this city there is not only a school but there was also a movie theatre and gradually for Almodovar, cinema has evolved as the real education.


Once he was asked how he got the inspiration to become a filmmaker? He answered in a very smart way! He told that I was there in the city of Caceres to become a priest but the movie theatre has given me more than being a priest. The movie theatre was my real education and now I am here sitting here as a filmmaker.

There were a number of directors that influenced Almodovar and those were Luis Buñuel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alfred Hitchcock, John Waters, Ingmar Bergman and Luis García Berlanga. When he initially moved to Madrid, his parents didn’t want it for him. In 1967, Almodovar reached Madrid with the aim to become a film director. But there were problems waiting for him at the very beginning of his career. He had some financial problems when France closed the National School of Cinema. Almodovar had to complete his course for filmmaking on his own. In order to support his study, he worked hard with several odd jobs. He has even worked at the Madrid flea market to sell used items. Eventually he got a permanent job with the national phone company in Spain. Telefonica is the company that has offered him such job and here Almodovar worked for more than twelve years. Along with the job, he still had an interest for filmmaking.

Almodovar’s interest grew for experimental cinema and theatre in the early seventies. He has sung a collaboration with the vanguard theatrical group in Loc Goliardos. With this theatrical team he got his first chance in the professional roles and there he met Carmen Maura. At that time, Almodovar was also involved in the writing job. He was writing articles, comics and stories for several counterculture magazines and books.
Those days, Madrid has come across as huge change! It’s the developing alternative cultural scene that has given Almodovar enough chance to enhance his social talents. Soon he managed to become an important figure in La Movida Madrilena, which was a cultural revitalization centre that follows the fall of Franco systems. In the year 1974, Almodovar has managed to release his short films on a Super-8 camera. These short films were based on sexual narratives and there was no soundtrack. Soon after, Almodovar has confessed things that are associated with his short films. He told that he was not able to add soundtracks because they were a tough task for me. I managed to show these films in bars and parties. The magnetic strip determined for the short films were of poor quality and they were very thin. Almodovar became really famous in Madrid with his short films and they excluded a soundtrack.
However, Almodovar managed to take a cassette of the music. Almodovar has given his own voice to all the characters in those short films and even for the dialogues and song sections . After four years, in 1978 Almodovar managed to complete his first Super-8 full-length movie – Folle, Folle Folleme, Tim. It was a magazine style melodrama. In that year Almodovar has signed up for a 16mm short Salome.

This is actually when Almodovar managed to get his first interaction with the professional world of Cinema. His latest film is called Broken Embraces which is released in 2009 and stars Penelope Cruz.

Popularity: 4% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Digg This!  |   Stumble it!  |   Add to Del.icio.us  |   Hype it Up!  |     |   Print This   |  



, , , , ,

Leave a Reply

CommentLuv Enabled