All about Almodvar

New critical perspectives on the filmmaker behind All About My Mother, Talk to Her, and Volver One of world cinemas most exciting filmmakers, Pedro Almodvar has been delighting, provoking, arousing, shocking, andabove allentertaining audiences around the globe since he first burst on the international film scene in the early 1980s. All about Almodvar offers new perspectives on the filmmakers artistic vision and cinematic preoccupations, influences, and techniques. Through overviews of his oeuvre and in-depth analyses of specific films, the essays here explore a diverse range of subjects: Almodvars 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 Almodvars own diary account of the making of Volver and featuring never-before-seen photographs from El Deseo production studio, All about Almodvar both reflects and illuminates its subjects dazzling eclecticism. Contributors: Mark Allinson, U of Leicester; Pedro Almodvar; Isolina Ballesteros, Baruch College; Leo Bersani, UC Berkeley; Marvin DLugo, Clark U; Ulysse Dutoit, UC Berkeley; Peter William Evans, Queen Mary U of London; Vctor Fuentes, UC Santa Barbara; Marsha Kinder, USC; Steven Marsh, U of Illinois, Chicago; Andy Medhurst, U of Sussex; Ignacio Olivia, Universidad CastillaLa Mancha, Cuenca; Paul Julian Smith, U of Cambridge; Kathleen M. Vernon, SUNY Stony Brook; Linda Williams, UC Berkeley; Francisco A. Zurin, U Carlos III, Madrid.