Dolor y gloria
Dedicating a retrospective to Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar means bringing light to a major cinematographic work, all together definitively cinephile, popular and exhilarating. This fierce artisan of film staging is carried by characters driven with vivid forces that often take them away from comfort and push them to discover brand new facets of themselves. They are then transformed, by means of love or disillusion. Coming back, they put conventional opinions at rest, shaping genders and social constraints. The art of filming does the rest.
Nominated for 2 Academy Awards in 2020
Pain and Glory tells of a series of reencounters experienced by Salvador Mallo, a film director in his physical decline. Some of them in the flesh, others remembered: his childhood in the 60s, when he emigrated with his parents to a village in Valencia in search of prosperity, the first desire, his first adult love in the Madrid of the 80s, the pain of the breakup of that love while it was still alive and intense, writing as the only therapy to forget the unforgettable, the early discovery of cinema, and the void, the infinite void that creates the incapacity to keep on making films. Pain and Glory talks about creation, about the difficulty of separating it from one’s own life and about the passions that give it meaning and hope. In recovering his past, Salvador finds the urgent need to recount it, and in that need he also finds his salvation.
Pedro Almodóvar
Born in 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, Spain, Pedro Almodóvar had a provincial childhood, marked by a strong women presence and a religious education. At the age of 18, he moved to Madrid and worked various jobs while immersed in the Madrid movida, a creative and fiery cultural movement that coincided with the democratic transition. He was introduced to theater, performance and writing in counterculture circles, and even wrote Patty Diphusa, a landmark novel in the emerging homosexual literature. In the 70s, he began directing short and then feature films. Initially noticed by the underground milieu, the filmmaker has a growing success in Spain. In 1986, he co-founded the production company El Deseo with his brother, and two years later, Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown brought him international fame, which has never waned since.
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Podcast : Philosopher avec Almodovar
Exubérance, passion, identités perdues, corps transformés, désir violent et humour doux-amer... Voici quatre émissions pour philosopher avec Pedro Almodovar ! Découvrez un cinéaste unique en son genre à l'univers bariolé, qui saisit ce qu'aucun autre regard n'a jamais su capter : le langage des émotions à même la peau, la caméra qui effleure les corps et sublime les ambiguïtés dans des couleurs éclatantes. Ode à la folie qui mélange les corps et les esprits pour le meilleur et pour le pire...
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