Introductory description

This course aims to introduce students to an incredibly rich oeuvre, periodise it through various paradigms (from the political to the authorial), chart its development, and broach the following questions: What does the work owe to the culture it arises from? How is it queer? What does it mean, to whom and in what contexts? What does Almodóvar’s owe to Hollywood cinema in general and melodramatic and noir variants in particular. What is the inter-relationship of representations of gender, sexuality and nation in his work? How does the oeuvre fit into a history of Spanish Cinema, Queer Cinema but also broader contexts and histories of art, design, fashion, advertising cultures? The focus will be largely on the work of one director but seen through various contexts (social and historical; national variants of films studies concepts such as genre, stars, style, authorship) and concepts (camp, postmodernism, metamodernism) so as to also explore and interrogate the meaning and significance of the oeuvre

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week One –An aesthetic context for Almodóvar: Pepi Luci Bom (Pedro Almodóvar, 1980).
Week Two: Transitions, Movidas, Queerness: What Have I Done to Deserve This/ Que hecho yo para merecer esto? (Pedro Almodóvar, 1984).
Week Three – Economic and Infrastructural contexts for a work: Gay Cinema as International Breakthrough - The Law of Desire/ La ley del deseo (Pedro Almodóvar, 1986).
Week Four – Postmodernism with Feeling: Cinema - Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown/ Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios ( Pedro Almodóvar, 1988).
Week Five – 100% Animal: Masculinity and Spanish Cinema - Live Flesh/Carne trémula/ ,
Week Six – Reading and Viewing week.
Week Seven – Melodrama and advertising cultures - All About My Mother/ Todo sobre mi madre, Pedro Almodóvar, 1999.
Week Eight – Filming the Unfilmable in a different vein – Talk to Her/ Hable con ella, (Pedro Almodovar, 2002).
Week Nine - Film History as mise-en-scène - Bad Education/ La mala educación, (Pedro Almodovar, 2006).
Week Ten – Metacinema/ Metamodernims Broken Embraces/ Los abrazos rotos (Pedro Almodóvar, 2009)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• -Demonstrate a knowledge of the work of Pedro Almodovar
• Be able to discuss concepts such as queer, camp, postmodernism and metamodernism in relation to the work of Almodóvar
• Be able to discuss Almodovar’s work as part of different histories of cinema (national and international cinemas; social and political; mainstream and queer; aesthetics and style) variously inter-relating; and also as metacinema, as works commenting on cinema itself
• Further refine and improve skills of textual analysis.
• Further improve skills in the construction of argument , expression, and presentation of evidence.

Indicative reading list

Mark Allinson, A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar, I.B. Tauris, 2001.
Marvin D'Lugo, Pedro Almodóvar, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2006.
Santiago Fouz-Hernandez and Alfredo Martinez-Exposito, Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema, I.B. Tauris, 2007
Peter Evans, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, BFI, 1996
Dick Hebdige, Staking Out the Posts, Hiding in The Light, Routledge, 1988.
Barry Jordan and Mark Allinson, Spanish Cinema: A Student's Guide, Hodder Arnold, 2005.
Marsha Kinder, Refiguring Spain: Cinema/Media/Represenation, Durham University Press, 1997.
Paul Julien Smith, Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, London, Verson, 1994.
Alberto Mira, The Cinema of Spain and Portugal, London: Wallflower, 2005
Ana Maria Sánchez Arce, The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, Manchester University Press, 2020.
Thomas Sotinel, Almodóvar, Cahiers du cinema sarf, 2007.
Jason Ananda Jospheson Storm, Metamodernism: The Future of Theory, University of Chicago Press, 2021).
Frédéric Strauss, Almodóvar on Almodóvar (Revised Edition,London: Faber and Faber, 2006.
Robin Van Dern Akke, Alison Giboons and Timothy Vermeulen, Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect and Depth After Postmodernism, London, 2017).
Tom Whittaker, The Spanish Quinci film: Delinquency, Sound, Sensation, 2020).

Research element

Students will have to write an essay that will involve research into concepts, contexts and texts.

Interdisciplinary

All cinema has an interdisciplinary dimension. Here fashion, food, Spanish history, Art History, philosophy and much else will be brought in to enhance our understanding of this particular oeuvre.

International

The work itself is international in scope, has an international reach and will be of interest to international students.

Subject specific skills

-textual analysis
-increased understanding of the work of Pedro Almodóvar, Spanish Cinema, Queer Cinema
-film history
-film theory

Transferable skills

-expression
-argumentation
-analysis
-methods of historicising
-relation between text and concepts
-relation between texts and contexts.