Is there a single Almodovar big-screen moment? For the next month, you decide, as eight classic works by the Spanish auteur play in a grand revival at the Castro and the Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley. This Viva Pedro re-release (the first time some of these titles have been theatrically available since their original runs) is a prelude to the Bay Area debut of his latest work, Volver, in November.

The nearly dozen-and-a-half films from auteur Pedro Almodovar are still the best single artistic guide to the extraordinary period of democracy and personal freedom that overtook Spanish society after the death of Francisco Franco. Almodovar taught himself cinema storytelling with a super-8 camera purchased while working for the phone company. His American reputation kicked off with the deliciously anarchic What Have I Done to Deserve This? Featuring the awesome debut of Almodovar diva Carmen Maura as a meth-addicted Madrid housewife whose taxi-driving lout of a husband is not only cheating and failing to support her, but has collaborated with a German mistress to forge a book of Hitler diaries, the film left American audiences nonplussed with its non-moralizing approach to a mother paying for orthodontist work by agreeing to have her barely teenage son adopted by a boy-loving dentist.

Two years later, Maura would star as the transsexual sister of an openly gay filmmaker. In my favorite Pedro moment, Maura's Tina is walking down a sultry Madrid street with her brother and a young girl they have rescued from the clutches of her self-absorbed mother. Overcome by the heat, Tina spots a municipal street-cleaner hosing down the cobblestones and demands that he turn the hose on her. The scene has a new queer-style family united in an oddly orgasmic episode that, in a crazy way, corresponds to that extraordinary scene when Marcello Mastroianni tumbles into a Roman fountain in Fellini's pioneering La Dolce Vita.

Almodovar's distinguishing skill is his ability to mix genres with a sublimely outlandish humor that leaves would-be critics of his sexual politics speechless.

Bad Education (2004) Gael Garcia Bernal is brilliantly showcased in the masterwork of Almodovar's cinema of men behaving badly, a triple-barreled homage to Hitchcock, Billy Wilder and himself. Inspired by a scene in La

Antonio Banderas and Maria Barranco in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Photo: Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics

w of Desire where Carmen Maura's Tina has an awkward reunion with a priest who had abused her as a child, Bad Education truly sizzles with an electric triple role turned in by Bernal, who is beautiful and deadly both as a Barbara Stanwyck-like femme fatale and a boyish enfant terrible young actor looking for a killer part. The film is a tour de force on the subject of telling stories on film. Kicking off when Almodovar alter ego filmmaker Enrique (Fele Martinez) receives a mysterious visitor (Bernal) who claims to be his schoolboy friend and childhood lover Ignacio, Almodovar then allows us to see Enrique's film of Ignacio's story about the abuse, then ups the ante when a sexual coming-of-age tragedy shifts into a full film noir revenge tale. Bernal and Martinez give mesmerizing performances as the two men conduct a deadly duel that blows the Davis/Crawford catfights off the screen. High-voltage sex scenes make a pointedly painful guide to the differences between physical and emotional penetration. Bernal's characters all perform operatically giving and receiving (there's a delectable full frontal shot of Gael through wet jockey shorts), although Almodovar warns these characters do not regard sex as "a source of pleasure, but of pain for everyone else." With Javier Camara, Daniel Gimenez-Cacho, Lluis Homar and Fransisco Boira. (Castro, 9/20-21)

Law of Desire (1987) One of the director's most male-obsessed comedy/melodramas commences with a startlingly frank scene of autoeroticism with diabolically comic overtones, merely a prelude for a delicious expos� about a movie director (Eusebio Poncela) who must battle for his own body and soul against two male lovers and his own brother (Carmen Maura), who becomes his sister, the sex change prompted by a passionate liaison with their father. With Antonio Banderas, Miguel Molina and Bibi Anderson. (Castro, 9/15-17)

All About My Mother (1999) A beautiful teenager celebrates his 17th birthday with a note begging his mother to allow him to meet his absent father. "I don't care who he is, or how he treated my mother. No can take that right away from me." That night, Esteban is hit by a car, prompting his mother to take a painful journey through her own unsettling adolescence to inform a transsexual, Lola, that the son he never knew reserved his last written words for him. A tender yet resolutely unsentimental meditation about family born and chosen, All About My Mother prompted film historian David Thompson to gush, "A sweeping tribute to women, and one of those films to make you wonder if God didn't mean movies to be gay." With Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes and Penelope Cruz. (Castro, 9/8-10)

Talk To Her (2002) Almodovar reinvents the buddy flick around the premise of two guys caring for two comatose women, one gored in a bullring. It both rekindles the best of his early dark comedies of runaway passion and reaches sublime new layers of feeling. The silent film-within-a-film that neatly balances sincerity with parody (sort of The Incredible Shrinking Man meets The Vagina Monologues) is enchanting. With Javier Camara, Dario Grandinetti, Leonor Watling and Geraldine Chaplin. (Castro, 9/11-12)

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) This commercial-breakthrough screwball comedy features a woman (Maura) who is so angry at a disappearing boyfriend that she practically erupts into flames. Indeed, her bed does ignite. Inspired by a Jean Cocteau play, Women features some memorable comic misadventures, including the interference with a police investigation when two cops are served drug-laced gazpacho. With Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano and Rossy De Palma. (Castro, 9/1-7)

Live Flesh (1997) The birth of a baby boy on a Madrid bus kicks off decades of strange karma for two cops, two gals and the now-grown baby. Featuring the oddest "happy" ending since Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down. With Javier Bardem, Angela Molina, and Penelope Cruz. (Castro, 9/18-19)

Matador (1986) Two bullfighters (male and female) develop an obsessive and deadly attraction for each other. Don't come late for this one. Assumpta Serna, Antonio Banderas and Carmen Maura. (Castro, 9/22-28)

The Flower of My Secret (1995) A romance novelist tries to kick her bad habits both literary and carnal with surprisingly good results, after the usual run of Almodovar pratfalls, including a very tight pair of boots. With Marisa Paredes, Juan Echanove, Carmen Elias and Rossy De Palma. (Castro, 9/13-14)