José Luis Alcaine

Camera operator

December 26, 1938 (87 years)

Tangier, Morocco

Biography

José Luis Alcaine Escaño (born 26 December 1938) is a Spanish cinematographer. Educated in Tangier, he was the first cinematographer to use a fluorescent tube as key lighting in the 1970s. He has worked on films such as Belle Époque (Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 1993), Two Much (1995), Blast from the Past (1999), and The Skin I Live In (2011). He won the European Film Award for Best Cinematographer for Volver, and has received five Goya Awards for best cinematography. In Febru…

Filmography

6.3

The Tit and the Moon

A child does not stand the idea of having a new brother and dreams about drinking milk from the breasts of his mother again. The child asks the moon to bring him a tit only for him.

7.5

The Skin I Live In

A brilliant plastic surgeon creates a synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His guinea pig: a mysterious and volatile woman who holds the key to his obsession.

6.8

Blast from the Past

Following a bomb scare in the 1960s that locked the Webbers into their bomb shelter for 35 years, Adam now ventures forth into Los Angeles to obtain food and supplies for his family, and a non-mutant wife for himself.

6.2

Jamon Jamon

José Luis has a cushy corporate job at the lingerie factory his mom owns. After he falls in love and proposes to Silvia, a beautiful laborer on the underwear assembly line, his mom enlists Raul, a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter, to seduce Silvia.

6.8

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

After being released from a mental hospital, a troubled young man tracks down an actress he once had sex with and forces her into captivity, determined to make her part of his life.

7.5

Volver

Three generations of women deal with family secrets while surviving the east wind, fire, insanity, superstition, lies and even death.

7.4

Bad Education

When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.

7.4

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

After being dumped by her lover, Pepa finds her life and the lives of those around her spiraling out of control in a deliciously chaotic series of events.

5.7

Stay as You Are

A married Roman landscape architect starts an affair with a young woman who might be a shadow from his past.

6.7

Belle Époque

In 1931, a young soldier deserts from the army and falls into a country farm, where he is welcomed by the owner due to his political ideas. Manolo has four daughters, Fernando likes all of them and they like him, so he has to decide which one to love.

7.4

Pain and Glory

Salvador Mallo, a filmmaker in the twilight of his career, remembers his life: his mother, his lovers, the actors he worked with. The sixties in a small village in Valencia, the eighties in Madrid, the present, when he feels an immeasurable emptiness, facing his mortality, the incapability of continuing filming, the impossibility of separating creation from his own life. The need of narrating his past can be his salvation.

N/A

Pedro x Javis

A three-part review of Pedro Almodóvar's life and filmography, tracing his path from La Mancha to global filmmaking prominence and examining recurring themes that define his cinematic vision.

6.8

Parallel Mothers

Two unmarried women who have become pregnant by accident and are about to give birth meet in a hospital room: Janis, in her late-thirties, unrepentant and happy; Ana, a teenager, remorseful and frightened.

6.5

Everybody Knows

Laura, a Spanish woman living in Buenos Aires, returns to her hometown outside Madrid with her Argentinian husband and children. However, the trip is upset by unexpected events that bring secrets into the open.

4.6

Domino

Seeking justice for his partner’s murder by an ISIS member, a Copenhagen police officer finds himself caught in a cat and mouse game with a duplicitous CIA agent who is using the killer as a pawn to trap other ISIS members.

5.5

Golden Balls

A libidinous construction worker uses his charm and bravado in an attempt to attain enough finances to build his dream project.

5.2

Passion

The rivalry between the manipulative boss of an advertising agency and her talented protégée escalates from stealing credit to public humiliation to murder.

9.0

Cuentos de Borges

No description available

6.2

Wild Oats

Everything changes for Eva when she receives an insurance settlement check accidentally made out for $5,000,000 instead of the expected $50,000. She and her best friend take the money and head out for the adventure of a lifetime.

5.5

Two Much

A struggling Miami art gallerist incurs the wrath of a mobster when he becomes accidentally engaged to his flighty ex-wife, but he falls in love with the woman's sister, so he invents a twin brother and plays both parts to satisfy the women.