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More wigs, more mandarin collars, more anachronisms, more phalluses, more Jungian megalomania: The octogenarian, Chilean-born director, comics writer, and guru Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain, El Topo) continues to plumb his early life in Endless Poetry, the sequel to his autobiographical comeback of sorts, The Dance Of Reality. The time is now the early 1940s. The teenage, still virginal Alejandro (Jeremias Herskovits and Adan Jodorowsky, the latter closer to 40) is ready to leave behind his macho father, Jaime (Brontis Jodorowsky), and his long-suffering mother, Sara (Pamela Flores, who sings all of her lines in operatic soprano), to make it as an avant-garde poet in the bohemian circles of Santiago. He is properly outfitted with a futurist collarless jacket—the start of a lifelong love affair, perhaps—and one of those Jean Cocteau or Sergei Eisenstein Bride Of Frankenstein ’dos that attached themselves to the heads of artistic white men ...

Three years ago, Alejandro Jodorowsky returned to filmmaking for the first time since 1990 with his sumptuous autobiographic epic The Dance of Reality. Now the octogenarian’s second part of a planned five-part series — think the tales of Antoine Doinel on acid — heralds the madcap hippie director of El Topo and The Holy Mountain as a master of a deeply personal magic-realist genre, effortlessly moving as it is psychologically and artistically rich.

Endless Poetry, which screened at Cannes in the same Directors’ Fortnight sidebar that first premiered The Dance of Reality, kicks off just as its predecessor ends. Young Alejandro and his parents (Jeremias Herskovits, Brontis Jodorowsky and a singing Pamela Flores, all returning) arrive in gritty Santiago, Chile’s capital, from their rural outpost in the northern area of the country. Alejandro doesn’t adapt well to the new surroundings, but when he chances upon a copy of Lorca’s poetry,...

★★★★☆ It's been more than two decades since audiences last got to see a new film from visionary Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, with Frank Pavich's documentary on an abandoned sci-fi epic - Jodorowsky's Dune (2013) - looking like being the closet they might get. Now comes The Dance of Reality (2013), an absurdist dreamscape of a biopic that begins with the director himself addressing the camera extolling the the life-giving power of money; presumably by way of an explanation for his twenty-five year absence and its abrupt end. While still a carnival of politics and sex, in keeping with his most famous work, it's significantly more sincere story of myth and memory.

The edges of his provocation have been rounded and wilful obfuscation is less of a hurdle than viewers may have had to leap in the past; though this may not be surprising for a film that purports to tell of his family history.

The Dance of Reality

Written and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Chile, 2013

If Alejandro Jodorowsky’s name has been in the news as of late, it’s largely thanks to Frank Pavich’s excellent documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. While this is a fascinating and tantalizing examination of what might have been a stunning feature in the filmmaker’s rather limited body of work, it should not distract from the films Jodorowsky actually made since the Dune debacle. This includes the 85-year-old’s latest feature (which is teased at the end of the documentary), the autobiographical The Dance of Reality, out now on blu-ray. This Felliniesque chronicle of occasionally inflated childhood reminisces and the sociopolitical factors that form one’s identity is a beautiful film, lovingly crafted, episodic though at times meandering, and certainly a passion project for its director.

We first see Jodorowsky himself in the present day, directly addressing the...

Title: The Dance of Reality Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky Starring: Brontis Jodorowsky, Pamela Flores, Jeremias Herskovits The year 2014 is proving to be something of an unlikely renaissance for 85-year-old surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, who was the central subject of a documentary detailing his vision of a collapsed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” and now sees the release of his first film in more than two decades, ”The Dance of Reality.” A deeply personal and characteristically weird curated trip through his recreated adolescence, this one-of-a-kind period piece is swollen with mythology, metaphor (political and social), visual poetry and elliptical tedium. Jodorowsky was born in 1929 in Tocopilla, a coastal town along the edge of the Chilean [ Read More ]

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The Dance of Reality

Written and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Chile/France, 2013

One of cinema’s great mythmakers, Alejandro Jodorowsky returned to his home town of Tocopilla to make The Dance of Reality, his first film in almost a quarter of a century. It presents a typically surreal account of his childhood and his father’s exploits in the turbulent political landscape of 1930s Chile, but it has particular resonance as it sheds light on the genesis of the ideas that shaped his career in film. The mythology that runs through El Topo, The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre is on display here, but, rather than forming part of a wholly fictional narrative, it is explicitly presented as Jodorowsky’s conceptualisation of his own ancestral past.

Central to the legend is his cruel father Jaime, played with great enthusiasm by Jodorowsky’s eldest son Brontis, who has come a long...

The Dance of Reality

Written and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Chile/France, 2013

One of cinema’s great mythmakers, Alejandro Jodorowsky returned to his home town of Tocopilla to make The Dance of Reality, his first film in almost a quarter of a century. It presents a typically surreal account of his childhood and his father’s exploits in the turbulent political landscape of 1930s Chile, but it has particular resonance as it sheds light on the genesis of the ideas that shaped his career in film. The mythology that runs through El Topo, The Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre is on display here, but, rather than forming part of a wholly fictional narrative, it is explicitly presented as Jodorowsky’s conceptualisation of his own ancestral past.

Central to the legend is his cruel father Jaime, played with great enthusiasm by Jodorowsky’s eldest son Brontis, who has come a long...

Sundance just ended, and we are already preparing for the next big film festival, South By Southwest. Not too long ago, the festival announced a few of the films premiering this year, but now they’ve announced the main slate. The midnight selections and some inevitable late-breaking additions are still to be announced, but this should be more than enough to get you excited. Along with many World Premieres, and Sundance favorites like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood and Gareth Evans’ The Raid 2, the line up also includes an anniversary screening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and an extended Q&A screening of The Grand Budapest Hotel with Wes Anderson. SXSW 2014 runs March 7 through 15 in Austin, Texas. Check out the line up after the jump.

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Narrative Feature Competition

Eight world premieres, eight unique ways to celebrate the art of storytelling. Selected from 1,324 films submitted to SXSW 2014. Films screening in Narrative...

The 2014 SXSW "Film Features Program" includes 115 titles, and along with the previously announced zombie culture documentary Doc of the Dead, there's a lot for the horror crowd...

...including special screenings of the original Godzilla and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, early looks at upcoming TV shows "From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series" and "Penny Dreadful," the U.S. premiere of Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Dance of Reality, and new films from the Spierig brothers, Nacho Vigalondo, and Jim Jarmusch.

The genre-heavy "Midnighter" lineup will be announced next week along with the list of short films, but in the meantime here are the horror highlights (or what we assume will be of interest given their descriptions) to be on the lookout for during the fest.

Note that new for 2014, they've introduced the "Episodic" category, created to highlight innovative new work hitting the small screen.

The 2014 SXSW Film Festival runs March 7-15 in awesome Austin,...

Today the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival announced a diverse features lineup for this year’s Festival, the 21st edition and running March 7 – 15, 2014 in Austin, Texas. The 2014 program expands on SXSW tradition of embracing a range of genres and span of budgets, featuring a wealth of vision from experienced and developing filmmakers alike.

For more information visit http://sxsw.com/film.

Listed in the announcement are 115 of the features that will screen over the course of nine days at SXSW 2014. The lineup below includes 68 films from first-time filmmakers, and consists of 76 World Premieres, 10 North American Premieres and 7 U.S. Premieres. These films were selected from a record 2,215 feature-length film submissions composed of 1,540 U.S. and 675 international feature-length films. With a record number of 6,482 submissions total, the overall increase was 14% over 2013. The Midnighters feature section and the Short Film program will be announced on February 5, with the complete...

After announcing earlier this month that Jon Favreau’s Chef and the Veronica Mars movie will be making their world debuts at SXSW this year, the festival has revealed its full line-up, including further very promising world premieres, alongside appearances from some of the year’s most high-profile films.

The Midnight programme will be announced early next month, along with the Shorts line-up, and the complete Conference slate a little later as well.

Led by Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, Nicholas Stoller’s anticipated R-rated comedy, Neighbors, will be making its world debut at the festival, notably marked out as a ‘work-in-progress’ ahead of its theatrical release in May.

David Gordon Green’s acclaimed Joe will make its Us premiere, having bowed at Venice and then Toronto last year. Early reviews have Nicolas Cage giving one of the finest performances of his career, with Tye Sheridan (Mud) excellent alongside him.

Not sure if there is a Short Term 12 equivalent in this year’s Narrative Feature Comp, but on paper SXSW programmers are serving up a mean (and the usual lean group of 8 out of a whopping 1,324 film entries) for the upcoming competitiuon of eight which includes notable entries (that we’ve been tracking for a good time now) such as Zachary Wigon’s The Heart Machine, John Magary’s The Mend, Leah Meyerhoff’s I Believe in Unicorns and Lawrence Michael Levine’s Wild Canaries. Undoubtedly one of the most anticipated docs of the year, on the non-fiction side we find Margaret Brown’s The Great Invisible. Below you’ll find a breakdown of the other sections (notable world preems in We’ll Never Have Paris and Faults (see Mary Elizabeth Winstead above), some Sundance items with Texan connections and other nuggets.

Narrative Feature Competition

Eight world premieres, eight...

Jodorowsky returns with his first feature film in over twenty years – his last being the rather disappointing and atypical The Rainbow Thief – the bewitching La Danza de la Realidad (The Dance of Reality). An adaptation of his autobiographical book of the same name La Danza de la Realidad is obviously a deeply personal work but it is not a film that it is anywhere near as difficult to connect to as something like The Holy Mountain, a dazzlingly beautiful but near impenetrable riddle of a film.

Jodorowsky has lost none of his wit or imagination since making films such as The Holy Mountain, El Topo or Santa Sangre and despite La Danza de la Realidad being a far easier film to understand and appreciate immediately than his previous works it is still far, far, far from a straightforward film.

Beginning with Jodorowsky appearing on screen and delivering an introductory monologue...