All About My Mother

press release: ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (TODO SOBRE MI MADRE)

Spain | 1999 | 35mm | 105 min. | Spanish with English subtitles

Director: Pedro Almodóvar; Cast: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penelope Cruz

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and widely heralded as Almodóvar’s crowning achievement, All About My Mother is the climax of the director’s self-described “cinema of women.” After the death of her teenage son, a grieving mother finds comfort through bonding with a cast of quintessentially Almodóvarian characters: lesbian junkies, transsexual prostitutes, and a pregnant, HIV-positive nun. This unabashed and authentic tearjerker brilliantly transposes the deep emotion of classic Hollywood melodramas to fin de siècle Barcelona.

Sunday Cinematheque at the Chazen: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar

For our Fall Sunday afternoon series at the Chazen Museum of Art, we will screen the beautiful and influential work of contemporary Spanish cinema’s best-known filmmaker, Pedro Almodóvar. A veritable industry onto himself, Almodóvar, as a writer, producer and director, has carved out a substantial slice of the international moviegoing audience for his classically told tales of offbeat lives and offbeat love. Almodóvar is an artist who does not hide his cinematic influences but every aspect of his work – from production design to storytelling techniques - always feels decidedly personal.

All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public.