What do you get when you combine transvestites, pregnant nuns and female bullfighters? You get a groundbreaking Pedro Almodóvar film. The Angelika Film Center is thrilled to be hosting the re-release of eight Pedro Almodóvar films.
The festival started Sept. 8 and will continue to run through Oct. 5. Each week will show case a different set of films.
Pedro Almodóvar was born in a small province just outside Calzada de Calatrava, Spain. At the age of 16 he moved out on his own to Madrid.
Almodóvar is not only an accomplished director, but also a screenwriter, composer and actor. The Spanish director has discovered such talents as Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderes.
He is known as the master of creating complex, red-blooded female characters and he attributes it to the women of his native La Mancha whom he watched battle the machismo of Spanish society in the 1950s and 60s.
Week two of the film festival, Sept. 15-21, the Angelika will be showing three films: “All About My Mother” (Todo sobre mi madre), “Talk to Her” (Hable con ella), and “Flower of My Secret” (La flor de me secreto). “All About My Mother” stars Penelope Cruz and Cecilia Roth in this Academy Award winning, internationally celebrated film.
The movie focuses on a mother who, distraught over her teenage son, drives to Barcelona searching for his favorite actress and along the way, bonds with a transvestite prostitute and a pregnant nun.
“Talk to Her” is yet another of Almodóvar’s Oscar winning films as well as named “Best Picture of the Year” by Time Magazine. It is the story of a controversial female bullfighter unable to live with her loneliness, a prima ballerina and two men who in a chance meeting discover both of their loves are in comas.
Week three, Sept. 22-28, “Law of Desire” (La ley del deseo), “Live Flesh” (Carne Trèmula) and “Bad Education” (La mala educación) are sure to make you sweat. These three films feature sex, murder and, of course, conflict with the Catholic church.
“Law of Desire” is the only movie where you’ll find Antonio Banderes playing a gay stalker with a transsexual brother and a disturbing obsession with a film director.
“Bad Education,” starring Gael GarcÃa Bernal of “The Motorcycle Diaries” and Fele MartÃnez, is not for the faint of heart. It tells the stories of two boys, Ignacio and Enrique, raised in a Spanish orphanage run by corrupt catholic priests. The experiences the boys share in the orphanage shape their lives in two very different ways and they rediscover each other later in life.
Week four – Sept. 29 – Oct. 5, the final week of the festival, will show “Matador.” Antonio Banderes stars as a retired bullfighter who finds his obsession for killing needs a new outlet.
All of Almodóvar’s films deal with edgy and taboo subject matter, but he does it in a sophisticated and thought provoking way. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see all eight ground breaking films in the theatre again.
All of the films have been removed from the marketplace for the re-release, and will be shown in Spanish with English subtitles. Student tickets are $6 each.
