Aesthetics, Ethics and Trauma in the Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar by Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-AlbillaOne of Spain's most celebrated directors, Pedro Almodóvar has won international recognition for his dark comedy-dramas like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother and Volver. Reconceptualising Almodóvar's films as theoretical and political resources, this innovative book examines a neglected aspect of his cinema: its engagement with the traumatic past, with subjective and collective memory, and with the ethical and political meanings that result from this engagement. With close readings of Almodóvar's films from the 1990s and 2000s, including Bad Education and The Skin I Live In, Julián Daniel Gutiérrez-Albilla explores how Almodóvar's cinema mourns and witnesses the traces of trauma, drawing on theoretical approaches from trauma studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy, film studies and visual studies to suggest that his work proposes an ethical model based on our compassionate relations to others, and envisions a world co-inhabited by plurality and difference.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781474400107
Publication Date: 2017-06-02
All about Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema by Brad Epps (Editor)One of world cinema¿s most exciting filmmakers, Pedro Almodóvar has been delighting, provoking, arousing, shocking, and¿above all¿entertaining audiences around the globe since he first burst onto the international film scene in the early 1980s.
All about Almodóvar offers new perspectives on the filmmaker¿s artistic vision and cinematic preoccupations, influences, and techniques. Through overviews of the filmmaker¿s oeuvre and in-depth analyses of specific films, the essays here explore a diverse range of subjects: Almodóvar¿s nuanced use of television and music in his films; his reworkings of traditional film genres such as comedy, horror, and film noir; his penchant for melodrama and its relationship to melancholy, violence, and coincidence; his intricate questioning of sexual and national identities; and his increasingly sophisticated inquiries into visuality and its limits.
Closing with Almodóvar¿s own diary account of the making of Volver and featuring never-before-seen photographs from El Deseo studio, All about Almodóvar both reflects and illuminates its subject¿s dazzling eclecticism.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9780816649600
Publication Date: 2009-05-21
Au Naturel: (Re)reading Hispanic Naturalism by J. P. Spicer-Escalante (Editor)Literary naturalism, Otherin the Hispanic context, has traditionally been read as a graphic realist school or movement linked predominantly to late nineteenth century literary production. The essays in Au Naturel: (Re)Reading Hispanic NaturalismOCowritten by scholars from different generations, nationalities and ideological backgroundsOCopropose a major revisionist contribution to the study of Hispanic naturalism. Based on a theoretical proposal that re-semanticizes naturalismo as a diachronic cou..."
Buñuel and Mexico: The Crisis of National Cinema by Ernesto R. Acevedo-MuñozThough Luis Bunuel, one of the most important filmmakers of the twentieth century, spent his most productive years as a director in Mexico, film histories and criticism invariably pay little attention to his work during this period. The only book-length English-language study of Bunuel's Mexican films, this book is the first to explore a significant but neglected area of this filmmaker's distinguished career and thus to fill a gap in our appreciation and understanding of both Bunuel's achievement and the history of Mexican film. Ernesto Acevedo-Munoz considers Bunuel's Mexican films made between 1947 and 1965 within the context of a national and nationalist film industry, comparing the filmmaker's employment of styles, genres, character types, themes, and techniques to those most characteristic of Mexican cinema. In this study Bunuel's films emerge as a link between the Classical Mexican cinema of the 1930s through the 1950s and the "new" Cinema of the 1960s, flourishing in a time of crisis for the national film industry and introducing some of the stylistic and conceptual changes that would revitalize Mexican cinema.
A Companion to Luis Buñuel by Rob Stone (Editor)A Companion to Luis Buñuel presents a collection of critical readings by many of the foremost film scholars that examines and reassesses myriad facets of world-renowned filmmaker Luis Buñuel's life, works, and cinematic themes. A collection of critical readings that examine and reassess thecontroversial filmmaker's life, works, and cinematicthemes Features readings from several of the most highly-regarded experts on the cinema of Buñuel Includes a multidisciplinary range of approaches from experts in film studies, Hispanic studies, Surrealism, and theoretical concepts such as those of Gilles Deleuze Presents a previously unpublished interview with LuisBuñuel's son, Juan Luis Buñuel.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781444336337
Publication Date: 2013-04-22
A Companion to Pedro Almodóvar by Kathleen M. VernonEdited 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
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781405195829
Publication Date: 2013-04-22
How the Films of Pedro Almodóvar Draw upon and Influence Spanish Society by Maria R. MatzIn the films of Pedro Almodóvar one experiences a vivid representation of Spanish life. His films are discussed here in lieu of gender relations, power dynamics, Spanish cultural identity, and inter-textually with other directors such as Alfred Hitchcock. The essays are written in both English and Spanish. They try to bring together a broad variety of interpretations to his popular films. Many articles deal with issues of gender and representations of cultural iconography from Catholicism on love and death. Through a variety of authors and angles, as well as in two languages, this volume opens new perspectives on the films of Pedro Almodóvar. This work portrays how Almodóvar reaches into Spanish history and utilizes social changes that followed the fall of Franco to form his aesthetic creations.
Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí: Forbidden Pleasures and Connected Lives by Gwynne EdwardsLorca, Bunuel and Dali were, in their respective fields of poetry and theatre, cinema, and painting, three of the most imaginative creative artists of the twentieth century; their impact was felt far beyond the boundaries of their native Spain. But if individually they have been examined by many, their connected lives have rarely been considered. It is these, the ties that bind them, that constitute the subject of this illuminating book. They were born within six years of each other and, as Gwynne Edwards reveals, their childhood circumstances were very similar. Each was affected by a narrow-minded society and an intolerant religious background which equated sex with sin and led all three to experience sexual problems of different kinds: Lorca the guilt and anguish associated with his homosexuality; Bunuel feelings of sexual inhibition; and, Dali virtual impotence. Having met during the 1920s at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, they developed intense personal relationships and channelled their respective obsessions into the cultural forms then prevalent in Europe, in particular Surrealism. Rooted in emotional turmoil, their work - from Lorca's dramatic characters in search of sexual fulfilment, to Bunuel's frustrated men and women, and Dali's potent images of shame and guilt - is highly autobiographical. Their left-wing outrage directed at bourgeois values and the Catholic Church was strongly felt, and in the case of Lorca in particular, was sharpened by the catastrophic Civil War of 1936-9, during the first months of which he was murdered by Franco's fascists. The war hastened Bunuel's departure to France and Mexico and Dali's to New York. Edwards describes how, for the rest of his life, Bunuel clung to his left-wing ideals and made outstanding films, while the increasingly eccentric and money-obsessed Dali embraced Fascism and the Catholic Church, and saw his art go into rapid decline.
Luis Buñuel by Román GubernThe turbulent years of the 1930s were of profound importance in the life of Spanish film director Luis Buñuel (1900-1983). He joined the Surrealist movement in 1929 but by 1932 had renounced it and embraced Communism. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), he played an integral role in disseminating film propaganda in Paris for the Spanish Republican cause. Luis Buñuel: The Red Years, 1929-1939 investigates Buñuel's commitment to making the politicized documentary Land without Bread (1933) and his key role as an executive producer at Filmófono in Madrid, where he was responsible in 1935-36 for making four commercial features that prefigure his work in Mexico after 1946. As for the republics of France and Spain between which Buñuel shuttled during the 1930s, these became equally embattled as left and right totalitarianisms fought to wrest political power away from a debilitated capitalism. Where it exists, the literature on this crucial decade of the film director's life is scant and relies on Buñuel's own self-interested accounts of that complex period. Román Gubern and Paul Hammond have undertaken extensive archival research in Europe and the United States and evaluated Buñuel's accounts and those of historians and film writers to achieve a portrait of Buñuel's "Red Years" that abounds in new information.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9780299284749
Publication Date: 2012-01-04
Michelangelo Antonioni: Interviews by Bert Cardullo (Editor)In the 1960s and 1970s, Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) forged a cinematic language that reflected a changed, postwar world. His early successes, including L'avventura (1960) and La notte (1961), reshaped film drama by focusing so intently on characters (particularly couples) that plot was often a secondary concern. He also moved away from the social realism of his Italian peers. His most notable English-language films, from Blow Up (1966) to Zabriskie Point (1970), engage contemporary politics and modern social alienation. Michelangelo Antonioni: Interviews collects a broad range of conversations with this iconoclastic filmmaker, including one, never before in print, with the editor of this volume. In interviews ranging from 1960 to 1983, Antonioni discusses his neuroses, his cinematic concerns, his roots in Italian neorealism, and the reasons he ultimately broke free of the style's constraints. He insists that the struggle to understand the inner lives of characters is the crucial issue that cinema must tackle. Bert Cardullo is professor of American culture and literature at Ege University in Izmir, Turkey. Among other books, he is the author of In Search of Cinema: Selected Writings on International Film Art and Vittorio De Sica: Director, Actor, Screenwriter.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781934110669
Publication Date: 2008-04-01
Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue: Eight Reflections on Cinema by Murray PomeranceMichelangelo Antonioni, who died in 2007, was one of cinema's greatest modernist filmmakers. The films in his black and white trilogy of the early 1960s--L'avventura, La Notte, L'eclisse--are justly celebrated for their influential, gorgeously austere style. But in this book, Murray Pomerance demonstrates why the color films that followed are, in fact, Antonioni's greatest works. Writing in an accessible style that evokes Antonioni's expansive use of space, Pomerance discusses The Red Desert, Blow-Up, Professione: Reporter (The Passenger), Zabriskie Point, Identification of a Woman, The Mystery of Oberwald, Beyond the Clouds, and The Dangerous Thread of Things to analyze the director's subtle and complex use of color. Infusing his open-ended inquiry with both scholarly and personal reflection, Pomerance evokes the full range of sensation, nuance, and equivocation that became Antonioni's signature.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9780520948303
Publication Date: 2011-03-15
A Search for Belonging: The Mexican Cinema of Luis Buñuel by Marc RipleyAs one of the foremost Spanish directors of all time, Luis Bunuel's filmography has been the subject of innumerable studies. Despite the fact that the twenty films he made in Mexico between 1947 and 1965 represent the most prolific stage of his career as a filmmaker, these have remained relatively neglected in writing on Bunuel and his work. This book focuses on nine of the director's films made in Mexico in order to show that a concerted focus on space, an important aspect of the films' narratives that is often intimated by scholars, yet rarely developed, can unlock new philosophical meaning in this rich body of work. Although in recent years Bunuel's Mexican films have begun to enjoy a greater presence in criticism on the director, they are often segregated according to their perceived critical value, effectively creating two substrands of work: the independent movies and the studio potboilers. The interdisciplinary approach of this book unites the two, focusing on films such as Los olvidados, Nazarin, and El angel exterminador alongside La Mort en ce jardin, The Young One, and Simon del desierto, among others. In doing so, it avoids the tropes most often associated with Bunuel's cinema surrealism, Catholicism, the derision of the bourgeoisie and the approach most often invoked in analysis of these themes: psychoanalysis. Instead, this book takes inspiration from the fields of human geography, anthropology, and philosophy, applying these to film-focused readings of Bunuel's Mexican cinema to argue that ultimately these films depict an overriding sense of placelessness, overtly or subliminally enacting a search for belonging that forces the viewer to question what it means to be in place.
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9780231182348
Publication Date: 2017-11-28
Studying Talk to Her by Emily HughesTalk to Her (2002) is a hugely rich and interesting though ambiguous film that met with both popular success and critical acclaim. The film won an Oscar for best original screenplay and has been hailed by some critics as Pedro Almodóvar's masterpiece. Yet like most of Almodóvar's films, little is clear cut. The characters are complex and our affinity and empathy for them shifts throughout the film. In Studying Talk to Her, Emily Hughes provides an in-depth analysis of both the formal elements of the film (its narrative, genre, and auteur study) and the themes and issues it raises, discussing the social context of modern Spain and its old, traditional iconography; shifting attitudes towards gender; and, crucially, the film's uneasy, morally ambiguous depiction of rape and the spectator's reaction to it.
An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel by Luis BuñuelAlthough Luis Bunuel, one of the great filmmakers of the century, was notoriously reluctant to discuss his own work in public, he wrote--and wrote well--on many subjects over the years. This collection proceeds chronologically, from poetry and short stories written in Bunuel's youth in Spain to an essay written in 1980, not long before his death. Newly translated into English, the writings offer startling insights into the filmmaker's life and thought. The earliest pieces came well before Bunuel joined the Surrealist movement in Paris and created the landmark film Un chien andalou with Salvador Dali. Yet these and the early Surrealist writings reveal the inventiveness of the mind that would later create such masterpieces of cinema as L'Age d'or, Los olvidados, Viridiana, The Milky Way, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and That Obscure Object of Desire. Later writings, which include screenplays and reflections on his own and others' films, illuminate many aspects of Bunuel's career, as well as the ways of thinking and perceiving that underlie his unique cinematic style. The final essay by this extraordinary artist sums up his view of the world--still vibrant and full of contradictions--at the end of his life.