Endless Poetry

Alejandro Jodorowsky is back with a critically acclaimed sequel to his recent autobiographical film The Dance of Reality (2013), which covered his early childhood and parts of his father’s life. Endless Poetry is the story of the director’s youth and early adult life, and can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of his earlier works. It has been described by the magazine Variety as one of the most accessible movies he ever made, “perhaps even his best”. It functions at any rate rather well as an introduction to Jodorowsky’s riotous filmatic universe.

The film begins where the previous one left off, as the Jodorowskys move to the Chilean capital Santiago, where, despite his father’s stringent opposition, the young Alejandrito starts to discover his artistic potential. It’s the 1940s, and Santiago is rife with opportunities to discover and to lose oneself over and over again. The naive, wide-eyed poet, played by Jodorowsky’s youngest son Adan, reads Garcia Lorcas poetry and meets other artists and poets, who become friends and lovers. Together, they experiment with life and love, in an attempt to live a poetic, sensual and authentic life as possible.

Jodorowsky’s world is one of the circus; magical and entertaining. Expect everything from dancing skeletons and passionate dwarves, to red devils, pantomimes, tarot-readers and much, much more. A truly original film, Endless Poetry is a wonderful, moving and poetic testimony to the existential meaning of art.

Bio:

Alejandro Jodorowsky (born in 1929) is often characterized as a living film legend, best known for his esoteric and surreal movies El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973) and Santa Sangre (1989). His career spans many decades and occupations - including actor, theatre director, composer, author of several important comic books, as well as self declared “psychomagician”. In 2014, Films from the South screened a retrospective of his films at the occasion of The Dance of Reality, his first film for 24 years.