Pedro ALMODÓVAR was born on September 24, 1949 in Calzada de Calatrava, Province of Ciudad Real, administrative district of Almagro and archbishopric of Toledo (SPAIN / EUROPE).

At the age of 8 years he emigrated with his family to Extremadura, which is another spanish province. There he studied and passed his first public examination in secondary school and finally took his school-leaving exam and university entrance qualification at a convent school of the Salesian Fathers and the Franciscan friars. His bad religious education only taught him to lose belief in God. In this epoch of his life he became adicted to the Movies.

When he was 16 years old he moved to Madrid alone, without his family and without money. He had only one concrete proyect: to study cinematic art and to make movies.

But it was already impossible to register at the Official School of Cinematic Arts, because General Franco had closed it. So he could not study the language (the Form, the Art). Therefore he decided to learn the the fundamental principles and dedicated himself to life. At the end of the sixties, in spite of the dictatorship, for a provincial boy Madrid was a city full of culture and liberty. He did a lot of sporadic jobs, but he could not buy himself a Super 8 Camera until he got his first serious job at the National Spanish Telephone Company Telefónica where he worked for twelve years as an administrative employee. During these years he passed his real formation. In the morning (from very early on) he was in contact with a social class he would never have got to know that thoroughly otherwise: the Spanish Middle Class in the beginning of the Age of Consumer Society. Its dramas and its misery. Everything was a goldmine for a future narrative writer. In the afternoon and in the evening he wrote, loved, acted with the group called "Los Goliardos", shot several Super 8 Movies. He collaborated on various underground magazines. He wrote stories and some of them were published. He was a member of a parodistic Punk-Rock-Band, Almodóvar y McNamara, etc.

He was lucky that the premiere of his first commercial movie coincided with the birth of the spanish democracy. After one and a half years of daredevil shooting in 16 mm, in 1980 his first movie Pepi, Lucy, Bom... was shown for the very first time. From this moment on the cinematic art became his second nature. He wrote and directed. And he lived, enough for being able to invent new lively stories. His movies are now shown in the cinemas all over the world. 

Credit: almodovarlandia.com