Tag Archives: alejandro jodorowsky

LATE-NIGHT FAVORITES: THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

The beautiful weirdness never ends in Jodorowsky cult classic THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Saturday, December 24, and Sunday, December 25, $13, 12 midnight
December 30-31, January 1, $13, 12 midnight
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

While churches around the city are filling up for midnight mass on Christmas Eve, you can have a completely different kind of religious experience at the IFC Center, one of New York’s cinematic temples. Inspired by Rene Daumal’s Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain also involves symbolically non-Euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, funneled through Carlos Castaneda, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and magic mushrooms and LSD galore. What passes for narrative follows a Jesus look-alike thief (Horacio Salinas) and an alchemist with a thing for female nudity (Jodorowsky) on the path to enlightenment; along the way they encounter the mysterious Tarot, stigmata, stoning, eyeballs, frogs, flies, cold-blooded murder, naked young boys, chakra points, life-size plaster casts, Nazi dancers, sex, violence, blood, gambling, turning human waste into gold, death and rebirth, and the search for the secret of immortality via representatives of the planets, each with their own extremely bizarre story to tell. Jodorowsky, who is credited with having invented the midnight movie with the acid Western El Topo (1970), literally shatters religious iconography in a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of jaw-droppingly gorgeous and often inexplicable imagery composed from a surreal color palette, set to a score by free jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and Archies keyboardist Ron Frangipane. (Frangipane also worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who produced this film with their business manager, Allen Klein.) The Holy Mountain — which brings a whole new insight to Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle — is filled with psychedelic mysticism centered around the human search for transcendence in a wilderness of the sacred and profane. Jodorowsky’s work can move you deeply, but don’t expect it to make much sense. Sit back and let in pour in and over you — you’ll feel it. You may hate it, but you’ll feel it. Although you’ll definitely hate the very end. The film is also screening on Christmas night and New Year’s weekend at the IFC Center, offering one helluva way to welcome in 2012.

ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY’S EL TOPO

Alejandro Jodorowsky takes viewers on quite an acid trip in surreal Western EL TOPO

EL TOPO (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday, November 1, $13, 6:00
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com

Chilean-born Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo is a psychedelic head trip, an acid Western that will blow your mind. Jodorowsky stars as the title character, a gunslinger traveling through a deserted landscape accompanied by his naked young son, who already knows his way around a firearm. After coming upon a town that has been decimated by a nasty group of marauders working for the Colonel, El Topo seeks violent revenge, eventually taking off with a woman and leaving his boy behind as he meets four masters on his path to proving he is the best there is. But soon El Topo is praying for redemption with a community of inbred cripples trapped in a cave. El Topo is a wild and bizarre journey through religious imagery, romance, and vengeance, a surreal spaghetti Western strained through the mad mind of Jodorowsky, widely hailed as the creator of the midnight movie. The film melds Bergman with Leone, Tod Browning’s Freaks with Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, filtered through Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before and, despite your better instincts, will lure you into the cult of Jodorowsky. El Topo is screening on All Saints’ Day at Lincoln Center, introduced by Jodorowsky and followed by a conversation with outgoing Film Society program director Richard Peña; the night before, Jodorowsky will be at MoMA to introduce a screening of The Holy Mountain, followed by a discussion with Klaus Biesenbach and Joshua Siegel.

MODERN MONDAYS: AN EVENING WITH ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY

The beautiful weirdness never ends in Jodorowsky cult classic THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, being screened Halloween night at MoMA

TO SAVE AND PROJECT
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Monday, October 31, 7:00
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Inspired by Rene Daumal’s Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain also involves symbolically non-Euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, funneled through Carlos Castaneda, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and magic mushrooms and LSD galore. What passes for narrative follows a Jesus look-alike thief (Horacio Salinas) and an alchemist with a thing for female nudity (Jodorowsky) on the path to enlightenment; along the way they encounter the mysterious Tarot, stigmata, stoning, eyeballs, frogs, flies, cold-blooded murder, naked young boys, chakra points, life-size plaster casts, Nazi dancers, sex, violence, blood, gambling, turning human waste into gold, death and rebirth, and the search for the secret of immortality via representatives of the planets, each with their own extremely bizarre story to tell. Jodorowsky, who is credited with having invented the midnight movie with the acid Western El Topo (1970), literally shatters religious iconography in a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of jaw-droppingly gorgeous and often inexplicable imagery composed from a surreal color palette, set to a score by free jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and Archies keyboardist Ron Frangipane. (Frangipane also worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who produced this film with their business manager, Allen Klein.) The Holy Mountain — which brings a whole new insight to Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle — is filled with psychedelic mysticism centered around the human search for transcendence in a wilderness of the sacred and profane. Jodorowsky’s work can move you deeply, but don’t expect it to make much sense. Sit back and let in pour in and over you — you’ll feel it. You may hate it, but you’ll feel it. Although you’ll definitely hate the very end. The Holy Mountain is screening on Halloween night at MoMA as part of the Modern Mondays program and the To Save and Project series; Jodorowsky will be on hand to introduce the film, then take part in a Q&A with MoMA’s Klaus Biesenbach and Joshua Siegel afterward. Advance tickets are sold out, but a limited number of seats will be released Monday morning at 9:30 at the Film and Media Desk. Jodorowsky will be at the Film Society of Lincoln Center the next night for a screening of El Topo and a conversation with Richard Peña.

SUMMER OPEN HOUSE

PS1 will celebrate summer with an open house today (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Sunday, June 19, suggested admission $10 (free for LIC residents and MoMA admission ticket holders), 12 noon – 5:00 pm
718-784-2084
www.ps1.org
summer open house sneak peek

MoMA PS1 opens its summer season with an open house today, featuring art, music, drinks, and more. They will officially unveil the new courtyard installation, a fun and fancy-free design by Interboro Partners & WHATAMI by start called “Holding Pattern” that includes Ping-Pong, foosball, kiddie pools, a sandbox, oak and plum trees, white ribbons, and a cool mirror area, nearly all of which will be donated to the local community at the end of the summer. Today is also the opening of “Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever,” a series of wild rooms displaying Trecartin’s unique films that take an unusual look at contemporary culture. Among the other exhibitions on view is Laurel Nakadate’s “Only the Lonely,” in which the New York-based photographer and filmmaker comments on femininity, loneliness, sexuality, and desire, centering on human contact that is disappearing in this age of social media; her “365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears,” comprising large-scale photographs she took of herself crying every day for a year, is simply overwhelming. If you’ve never seen Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 highly spiritual freak-out, The Holy Mountain, PS1 is screening it daily at 12 noon, 2:00, and 4:00 through June 30, accompanied by the cult filmmaker’s wacky annotated screenplay. PS1 pays tribute to early female video pioneers in “Modern Women: Single Channel,” comprising seminal work by such cutting-edge artists as Lynda Benglis, Dara Birnbaum, VALIE EXPORT, Joan Jonas, Pipilotti Rist, and Carolee Schneeman, many of whom frequently turned the cameras on themselves well before there was any such thing as American Idol, Survivor, or The Amazing Race. It’ll be hard not to think of the Gimp from Pulp Fiction as you make your way around “Nancy Grossman: Heads,” comprising Grossman’s black-leather-wrapped bondage-like life-size head sculptures from the late 1960s and early 1970s. And the second half of the dual MoMA/PS1 exhibition “Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception” is highlighted by the magnificent film Guards and a collection of camera guns in the café that you are allowed to pick up. Music will be provided by DJ Total Freedom, and artist Clifford Owens will give a special musical performance held all around PS1.

LATE-NIGHT FAVORITES: THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

The beautiful weirdness never ends in Jodorowsky cult classic THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, April 22, and Saturday, April 23, $13, 12:10 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

For the third time in about a month, this rarely screened cult classic is being shown in the city, so you have no excuse to miss it yet again. Inspired by Rene Daumal’s Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain also involves symbolically non-Euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, funneled through Carlos Castaneda, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and magic mushrooms and LSD galore. What passes for narrative follows a Jesus look-alike thief (Horacio Salinas) and an alchemist with a thing for female nudity (Jodorowsky) on the path to enlightenment; along the way they encounter the mysterious Tarot, stigmata, stoning, eyeballs, frogs, flies, cold-blooded murder, naked young boys, chakra points, life-size plaster casts, Nazi dancers, sex, violence, blood, gambling, turning human waste into gold, death and rebirth, and the search for the secret of immortality via representatives of the planets, each with their own extremely bizarre story to tell. Jodorowsky, who is credited with having invented the midnight movie with the acid Western El Topo (1970), literally shatters religious iconography in a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of jaw-droppingly gorgeous and often inexplicable imagery composed from a surreal color palette, set to a score by free jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and Archies keyboardist Ron Frangipane. (Frangipane also worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who produced this film with their business manager, Allen Klein.) The Holy Mountain — which brings a whole new insight to Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle — is filled with psychedelic mysticism centered around the human search for transcendence in a wilderness of the sacred and profane. Jodorowsky’s work can move you deeply, but don’t expect it to make much sense. Sit back and let in pour in and over you — you’ll feel it. You may hate it, but you’ll feel it. Although you’ll definitely hate the very end.

LATE-NIGHT FAVORITES: EL TOPO

Alejandro Jodorowsky takes viewers on quite an acid trip in surreal Western EL TOPO

EL TOPO (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Friday, April 15, and Saturday, April 16, $13, 12:10 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Chilean-born Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo is a psychedelic head trip, an acid Western that will blow your mind. Jodorowsky stars as the title character, a gunslinger traveling through a deserted landscape accompanied by his naked young son, who already knows his way around a firearm. After coming upon a town that has been decimated by a nasty group of marauders working for the Colonel, El Topo seeks violent revenge, eventually taking off with a woman and leaving his boy behind as he meets four masters on his path to proving he is the best there is. But soon El Topo is praying for redemption with a community of inbred cripples trapped in a cave. El Topo is a wild and bizarre journey through religious imagery, romance, and vengeance, a surreal spaghetti Western strained through the mad mind of Jodorowsky, widely hailed as the creator of the midnight movie. The film melds Bergman with Leone, Tod Browning’s Freaks with Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, filtered through Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before and, despite your better instincts, will lure you into the cult of Jodorowsky. (Next week the IFC Center will show another Jodorowsky classic, Holy Mountain, as part of its Late-Night Favorites series.)

ICONS: THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

The beautiful weirdness never ends in Jodorowsky cult classic THE HOLY MOUNTAIN

THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, October 29, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org

For the third time in about a month, this rarely screened cult classic is being shown in the city, so you have no excuse to miss it yet again. Inspired by Rene Daumal’s MOUNT ANALOGUE: A NOVEL OF SYMBOLICALLY AUTHENTIC NON-EUCLIDEAN ADVENTURES IN MOUNTAIN CLIMBING, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s THE HOLY MOUNTAIN also involves symbolically non-Euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, funneled through Carlos Castaneda, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and magic mushrooms and LSD galore. What passes for narrative follows a Jesus look-alike thief (Horacio Salinas) and an alchemist with a thing for female nudity (Jodorowsky) on the path to enlightenment; along the way they encounter the mysterious Tarot, stigmata, stoning, eyeballs, frogs, flies, cold-blooded murder, naked young boys, chakra points, life-size plaster casts, Nazi dancers, sex, violence, blood, gambling, turning human waste into gold, death and rebirth, and the search for the secret of immortality via representatives of the planets, each with their own extremely bizarre story to tell. Jodorowsky, who is credited with having invented the midnight movie with the acid Western EL TOPO (1970), literally shatters religious iconography in a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of jaw-droppingly gorgeous and often inexplicable imagery composed from a surreal color palette, set to a score by free jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and Archies keyboardist Ron Frangipane. (Frangipane also worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who produced this film with their business manager, Allen Klein.) THE HOLY MOUNTAIN — which brings a whole new insight to Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle — is filled with psychedelic mysticism centered around the human search for transcendence in a wilderness of the sacred and profane. Jodorowsky’s work can move you deeply, but don’t expect it to make much sense. Sit back and let in pour in and over you — you’ll feel it. You may hate it, but you’ll feel it. Although you’ll definitely hate the very end. This screening at the Rubin Museum of Art concludes the Icons series and will be introduced by multimedia poet Igor Satanovsky.