Spain

Pedro Almodovar – Most important new filmmaker to emerge from La Movida—the exhilarating atmosphere of freedom since the death of the dictator Franco in 1975.  Indeed, Almodovar might almost be considered its poet laureate—a debunker of all dogmas, a champion of individual freedom and autonomy. Like Bunuel, not much of a storyteller.  Fragmented, loosely connected comic skits as narrative.  Shock through mocking Catholicism.  Surrealistic, weird events presented as ordinary.

From poor family & sent to Catholic boarding school.  Bought super-8 cam at 22 & made overtly sexual no soundtrack shorts.

1988 – Ex Women on the verge of Nervous Breakdown (1988) Camp genre.  Carmen Maura plays a jilted actress who is so furious at her ex-lover that she doesn’t even have time for drugs, sex, or suicide. “Camp makes you look at our human situations with irony,” Almodovar pointed out, “In camp you sympathize with the lack of power, like the pathos of sentimental songs.  This is kitsch, and you are conscious that it is, but that consciousness is full of irony, never criticism.”

WATCH Women on Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

https://youtu.be/PypMOEKJuh8

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown trailer – CC

1989 – Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! Controversy over actress being held captive by and falling for a mentally unhinged man.  MPAA wanted to give an “X” rating for sex scenes.

1999- All About My Mother which won Best Foreign Language Oscar

Japan

In the ’80s Japanese cinema attendance continued to decline due to the increasing popularity of television and videotape. Feature films consisted of yakuza films (gangster pics), soft-core porn, sequel films, and comic book and tv program big screen adaptations.

One of the prominent Japanese filmmakers to emerge at this time was Juzio Itami. After playing a role in the popular and awarding-winning comedy, The Family Game, Itami began directing satirical comedies that explored the foibles/ ‘true face’ of Japanese society.

His popular comedy Tampopo (1986)—described as a “Noodle western”–is a rambling comic essay which good-naturedly satirized the Japanese obsession with ramen noodle restaurants, table manners, American movies, sex, and sexism. Itami’s wife, Nobuko Miyamoto, played the film’s charming heroine—as she did in all of his films.

WATCHTampopo

The narrative strand in Itami’s mosaic structure concerns the heroic efforts of Goro (Yamazaki) a Shane/Clint Eastwood cowboy-truck driver hybrid, to help Tampopo perfect her dismal skills as a ramen noodle cook. As most MEN are ramen chefs, the film is a satire of male chauvinism as much as anything else. Tampopo (which means “dandelion”) is a symbol of the female outsider, trying to make her way in a man’s world.

In 1992 he directed Minbo No Onna (Anti-Extortion) about a delinquent Yakuza. Though they think of themselves as modern samurai (w full body tattoos as signs of loyalty/honor) instead of gang members they were known for their extortion of small businesses and the gruesome brutality they inflicted on any who crossed them

In retaliation for this perceived insult, six days after release Itami was attacked, beaten, and slashed on the face by five members of the Goto-gumi, a Shizuoka-based yakuza clan, who were angry at Itami’s film’s portrayal of yakuza members. This attack led to a government crackdown on the yakuza. Later, Itami purportedly committed suicide in 1997 in Tokyo, by leaping from the roof of the building where his office was located. A reporter began investigating and suspected that because Itami was planning a new movie about Goto’s yakuza, “A gang of five of his people grabbed Itami and made him jump off a rooftop at gunpoint. That’s how he committed suicide.”

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