Alejandro Jodorowsky: An American Cinematheque Retrospective

ABOUT THE SERIES:

Chilean-French comic book writer, performance artist, anti-imperialist, psychomagician, college dropout with anarchic tendencies: these are just some of the forms taken by avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky for nearly a century on this earthly plane. It is with great privilege that the American Cinematheque welcomes Alejandro Jodorowsky in-person for a retrospective guaranteed to conjure up pure movie magic.

With Mexican acid western film EL TOPO, jam packed with sex, violence, and religious symbolism, Jodorowsky invented the quintessential “midnight movie.” His fascination with archetypes common to both the spiritual and cinematic realms is fundamental such as in the cult classic THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, following the archetypal fool on his quest for enlightenment, which made its 1974 American premiere right here with us in Los Angeles at Filmex, and the waking nightmare of SANTA SANGRE, depicting the reverberations of childhood trauma. But Jodorowsky’s use of violence is not a shock and awe tactic. In the documentary PSYCHOMAGIC, A HEALING ART, Jodorowsky reveals the ways in which symbolic action can be an effective therapeutic method by speaking to the unconscious on its own terms, bringing attention to pain in order to heal. Join the American Cinematheque and the filmmaker himself as we suffer the psychic pain of existence and come out stronger on the side, symbolically of course.