The Dance of Reality
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10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Alejandro Jodorowsky
Alejandro Jodorowsky premiered his first directorial feature in 23 years at Cannes this year with the fictionalized autobiographical film The Dance of Reality. The man behind cult favorites El Topo and The Holy Mountain delighted audiences with his magic-realist account of growing up in Tocopilla, Chile. It was met with a standing ovation, and the director called the film’s reception in France one of the proudest moments of his life. The Dance of Reality is marked by fantastic, surreal characters, from an opera-singing mother to an overzealous anarchist to a painted religious guru. It is easy to see how Jodorowsky’s […]
by Ariston Anderson on Jun 17, 2013 -
Cannes 2013: Portraits of Purgatory
Portraits of purgatory dot this year’s Cannes Film Festival, with movies that run the gamut in terms of styles and techniques: epic drama, cheeky comedy, documentary, animation, and surrealism. No matter what the setting, the plight is the same, with characters stuck in a cycle of emotional limbo where hope for happiness floats tantalizingly but incessantly out of reach. The most accomplished of the group is The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino’s voluptuously crafted riff on La Dolce Vita and a masterful study of 65-year-old Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), a dilettante journalist still coasting on the acclaim of a single early-career […]
by Stephen Garrett on May 22, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Dance of Reality
Earlier today Scott wrote about Jodorowsky’s Dune, the Cannes doc about the legendary mystical auteur’s famous failed attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel for the big screen, so now is a perfect time to post the trailer for the director’s new film, which is also having its world premiere on the French Riviera. The Dance of Reality is Jodorowsky’s first film since 1990, but the 23-year layoff does not seem to have dulled the director’s visual flair, sense of the bizarre or, well, general weirdness. This trailer has French rather than English subtitles, but the images more than speak for […]
by Nick Dawson on May 20, 2013 -
U.S. Indies Strong in Directors’ Fortnight
Yesterday, David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints was the sole U.S. entry in Critics’ Week, playing in a special screening. However, in the Directors’ Fortnight lineup, there is a more healthy dose of U.S. filmmakers. Magic Magic, one of two films starring Michael Cera that New York-based Chilean director Sebastian Silva premiered at Sundance, makes the leap from Park City to the Croisette, as does Jim Mickle’s cannibal movie We Are What We Are, starring “25 New Face” Julia Garner. Jeremy Saulnier, maybe better known as a stalwart indie cinematographer, premieres his second feature, Blue Ruin, in the strand, while […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 23, 2013
