A Companion to Pedro Almdovar

by D'Lugo, Marvin; Vernon, Kathleen M.

• ISBN13: 9781118325360
• ISBN10: 1118325362
• Edition: 1st
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2013-02-22
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Edited by leading authorities on the subject, and bringing together a stellar cast of contributors, this detailed appraisal of Pedro Almodóvar’s unique cinematic art examines the themes, style, and aesthetics of his oeuvre and locates it in the context of the profound cultural transformations in Spain since the 1970s.

• Brings together a stellar cast of contributors from across the globe  including recognized and established specialists as well as talented younger scholars
• Features contributions by Spanish film historians, where studies of Almodóvar’s work have been underrepresented in the academic literature
• Deploys new approaches to the analysis of film authorship by exploring contextual issues such as Almodóvar’s transnational appeal and the political dimensions of his works
• Traces the director’s fruitful collaborations in the areas of art and design, fashion and music

Author Biography

Marvin D'Lugo is Professor of Spanish and Adjunct Professor of Screen Studies at Clark University, Massachusetts where he teaches courses on Spanish and Latin-American cinema. He has published a number of books including Pedro Almodóvar (2006) in the University of Illinois Press’ Contemporary Film Directors series.

Kathleen M. Vernon is Associate Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She is author and editor of numerous studies on Spanish cinema and culture including Post-Franco, Postmodern: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar (1995).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Marvin D’Lugo and Kathleen M. Vernon

I. Bio-Filmography

1. Almodóvar’s Self-Fashioning: The Economics and Aesthetics of Deconstructive Biography
Paul Julian Smith

2. Creative Beginnings in Almodóvar’s Work
Francisco A. Zurián

3. Almodóvar and Hitchcock: A Sorcerer’s Apprenticeship
Dona Kercher

4. A Life, Imagined and Otherwise: The Limits and Uses of Autobiography in Almodóvar’s films
Alberto Mira

II. Spanish Contexts

5. El Deseo’s Itinerary: Almodóvar and the Spanish Film Industry
Marina Díaz López

6. Almodóvar and Spanish Patterns of Film Reception and Miguel Fernández
Josetxo Cerdán

7. Memory, Politics and the Post-Transition in Almodóvar’s Cinema
Juan Carlos Ibáñez

8. The Ethics of Oblivion: Personal, National, and Cultural Memories in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar
Adrián Pérez Melgosa

III. At the Limits of Gender

9. Our Rapists Ourselves: Women and the Staging of Rape in the Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar
Leora Lev

10. Paternity & Pathogens: Mourning Men and the Crises of Masculinity in Almodóvar
Dean Albritton

11. Domesticating Violence in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar
Noelia Saenz

12. La piel que habito: A Story of Imposed Gender and the Struggle for Identity
Francisco A. Zurián

IV. Re-readings

13. Reenvoicements and Reverberations in Almodóvar’s Macro-Melodrama
Marsha Kinder

14. The Flower of his Secret: Carne trémula and the Mise en scene of Desire
Celestino Deleyto

15. Scratching the Past on the “Surface” of the“Skin:” Embodied Inter-subjectivity, Prosthetic Memory, and Witnessing in Almodóvar's La mala Educación
Julián Daniel and Gutiérrez-Albila

16. Almodóvar’s Stolen Images
Javier Herrera

V. Global Almodóvar

17. Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown: From Madrid (1988) to New York (2010)
Isolina Ballesteros

18. Almodóvar’s Global Musical Marketplace
Kathleen M. Vernon

19. Almodóvar and Latin America: The Making of a Transnational Aesthetic in Volver
Marvin D’Lugo

20. Is there a French Almodóvar?
Jean-Claude Seguin

21. Almodóvar in Asia: Hong Kong, Taiwan and LGBT Film Culture
EK Tan

VI.  Art and Commerce

22. To the Health of the Author: Art Direction in Los abrazos rotos
John D. Sanderson

23. Making Spain Fashionable
Gerard Dapena

24. Almodóvar, Cyberfandom and Participatory Culture
Vicente Rodríguez-Ortega