In the early 1970s, a period marked by a surge in experimental cinema and the emergence of new cinematic voices, Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky embarked on an ambitious project that would challenge the conventions of traditional filmmaking. This was a time when filmmakers were pushing the boundaries of narrative and visual storytelling, experimenting with new techniques and themes. Jodorowsky, with his unique blend of surrealism and mysticism, was at the forefront of this movement. His goal was to adapt Frank Herbert’s iconic science fiction novel, Dune, into a film.

Jodorowsky is known for his avant-garde and surrealist style, which is evident in his body of work. In addition to his ambitions for Dune, he has directed several other films, each a testament to his unique artistic vision. These include El Topo (1970), a surreal western that is considered a classic of the acid western genre; The Holy Mountain (1973), a spiritual...

Spain’s Festival de Málaga, through its industry arm Mafiz (Málaga Festival Industry Zone), heads to the Cannes Marché du Film with five works-in-progress from burgeoning Andalusian talent.

“The Malaga Festival wants to support the completion of these works and make their international distribution viable,” commented Malaga head of industry, Annabelle Aramburu.

This year, as Cannes more broadly celebrates Spain, the event curates two titles that tackle its tumultuous history and one which takes audiences on an unconventional road trip questioning the biological clock alongside narratives that dissect the minutiae of new forms of co-existing and the baffling concept of destiny.

The second edition of Málaga Goes to Cannes takes place on Monday May 22.

“Alone In The Night,” (Guillermo Rojas)

A wry take on the eve of Feb. 23, 1981 when an attempted coup in Spain threatened its young democracy, profoundly changing the lives of the protagonists, an ensemble cast that includes...

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s films are confounding, grotesque, beautiful and healing, often within the same frame. The post-violence images of the opening sequence of El Tropo are made more horrific as they are reflected through the eyes of a seven-year-old boy, still naked from a rite of passage. Jodorowky’s films are a gateway drug. The Alejandro Jodorowsky 4K Restoration Collection of his cult classics Fando y Lis, El Topo, and The Holy Mountain, as well as his new Psychomagic, A Healing Art, are a first taste. The most surrealistic of the psychedelic filmmakers had no special effects, or even fancy cameras in his earliest days. He had visions, and meticulously created a physical world to capture those visions–and then he stuck an objective camera in front of it.

No stranger to psychedelics, it was John Lennon who first brought Jodorowsky out of the after-hours circuit and into the daylight,...

“You are seven years old. You are a man. Bury your first toy and your mother’s picture.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky: 4K Restoration Collection

will be available on September 18th. The deluxe box set by Abkco will include the surrealist filmmaker’s latest Psychomagic, A Healing Art, along with 4K restorations of El Topo, The Holy Mountain, and Fando Y Lis.

Loaded with extras and ephemera, the box set features a 78-page book

with photos and essays, a set of art cards together with four

Blu-ray discs, and two CDs housed in a high-quality case. Check Out this ‘Unboxing’ Video:

Psychomagic, A Healing Art will be available as part of Abkco Films’ Alejandro Jodorowsky: 4K Restoration Collection, due to release on September 18, 2020. This deluxe box set also includes The Maestro’s films Fando y Lis, El Topo, and The Holy Mountain, each meticulously restored in 4K on Blu-ray, along with...

Dafoe adds watchability in this story of a composer obsessed with a long-ago disappearance, but this arthouse drama feels like a misstep

There is a halo effect created by Willem Dafoe’s weathered features: those cliff-edge cheekbones perched above carved-out hollows instantly confer fierceness and depth of soul to whatever role he is playing. Dafoe’s face certainly adds watchability to this slow-going and precious arthouse drama, in which he plays an American visiting a dusty Mexican town to sift through his late father’s belongings. The film is directed with auteurist ambition by Daniel Graham and produced by the Mexican director Carlos Reygadas.

Dafoe is Paul, a composer struggling to complete an unfinished symphony by a long-dead genius. “I’ve laid down my tools. They’ve become dull,” he tells an old friend of his father, the elderly Zero (Brontis Jodorowsky). In this film’s characteristic style, the two...

Warner Bros. dropped the final trailer for “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” on Tuesday.

The studio teamed up with Twitter to exclusively launch the spot on the social media platform before it went live elsewhere. When the trailer debuted, electronic billboards posted in New York City, Toronto, and Tokyo flooded with real-time Twitter reactions from fans using the hashtag #WandsReady.

Eddie Redmayne returns in the highly anticipated sequel as the wizard Newt Scamander, who is called upon by Professor Dumbledore (Jude Law) to track down the evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp).

“The wizarding and non-wizarding worlds have been at peace for over a century,” Dumbledore tells Scamander in the new footage. “Grindelwald wants to see that peace destroyed.”

“You want me to hunt him down? To kill him?” Scamander asks. Dumbledore tells Scamander, “I cannot move against Grindelwald. It has to be you.”

Also in the clip, Ezra Miller...

The hype for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald cranked up another notch this weekend with the release of that amazing Sdcc trailer.

Within it, we got a fresh look at Newt Scamander’s time at Hogwarts, more of Johnny Depp as the sinister Grindelwald and a better glimpse at the magical side of Paris. Aside from all that, though, Warner Bros. also treated us to a brand new poster for the film, which can be seen in the gallery down below.

Featuring the expansive cast of characters, it asks the question of “Who Will Change The Future?” I mean, we kind of know the answer to that, as we’ve read the Harry Potter books and seen the movies, but it’s nice that they’re humoring us in that there’s going to be a bit of mystery in this whole thing.

Regardless, it’s good to see...

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald looks, well, fantastic! A new trailer for the sequel to the 2016 film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a prequel to the Harry Potter series, was screened at Warner Bros. Pictures' panel at 2018 San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday. The movie takes viewers back to Harry Potter's Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, shows a young Albus Dumbledore, played by Jude Law, and also reintroduces Nicolas Flamel, maker of the Sorcerer's Stone (aka the Philosopher's Stone), played by Brontis Jodorowsky. Johnny Depp made a surprise appearance at the Comic-Con panel, appearing as his character,...

Grab your wands everyone. Warner Bros. debuted a new trailer for “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” during the studio’s big Hall H panel Saturday morning at San Diego Comic-Con. And you can watch it right now above.

Two big takeaways from this one: We’re gonna get a lot of younger Dumbledore in this one, and it’s gonna be packed with “Harry Potter” lore. Including the inventor of the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Picking up soon after “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the film sees Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) recruited by the wizard Dumbledore (Jude Law) to defeat the evil Grindelwald (Johnny Depp).

Watch the trailer above.

Also Read: First Episode of 'Jack Ryan' Looks Like a Much-Needed Subversion of Its Source Material

Grindelwald was a dark wizard who preceded the dreaded Voldemort from the “Harry Potter” series, and in the books, he has a history...

Warner Bros. released new footage Tuesday for “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” with a teenage Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) receiving Defense Against the Dark Arts instruction at Hogwarts.

The footage generated a big laugh among attendees at the CinemaCon convention of theater owners in Las Vegas, with Jude Law portraying a young Albus Dumbledore as the bumbling Scamander faces a Boggart and a desk appears. Dumbledore explains that it’s manifested as Scamander’s fear: having to work an office job.

“This film, I get to go to Hogwarts, which is the best thing!” Redmayne proclaimed at the convention.

The David Yates film follows Dumbledore and Scamander as they join forces to recapture an escaped Gellert Grindelwald, played by Johnny Depp, who is on a mission to dominate all non-magical people with the help of his pureblood wizard followers. Depp did not appear at the CinemaCon event.

Ezra Miller,...

Something magical this way comes.

Warner Bros. has today conjured up our first official look at Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald, the David Yates-directed sequel that’s due in theaters exactly one year from now – November 16th, 2018.

True to their initial promise, the Powers That Be have taken a leaf out of Harry Potter‘s book when it comes to the title format of its Fantastic Beasts prequel saga, and it looks like Potterheads are about to get acquainted with Johnny Depp’s Gellert Grindelwald, a malevolent rogue that was once considered to be the most powerful Dark Wizard in the land – second only to Lord Voldemort.

Picking up soon after the finale of Fantastic Beasts, The Crimes Of Grindelwald “takes place in New York, Paris, and London, where we will see love and loyalties tested in this tumultuous time in the wizarding world,” according to a telegraph on Pottermore.

How magical! On Thursday, Warner Bros. announced the title for 2016's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Sharing the news via Twitter, the studio wrote, "In one year, return to the Wizarding World with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. #MagicInProgress #FantasticBeasts." The sequel, set for release on Nov. 16, 2018, stars Poppy Corby-Tuech as Rosier, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as Skender, Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald, Carmen Ejogo as Seraphina Picquery, Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski, Kevin Guthrie as Abernathy, Brontis Jodorowsky as Nicolas Flamel, Cornell S. John as Arnold Guzman, Zoë Kravitz as Leta Lestrange, Jude Law as Albus Dumbledore, Ezra Miller as Credence,...

Warner Bros. may have all hands at the pump in anticipation of Justice League – November 17th is the date for your diaries – but it appears the studio is now beginning to make preparations for another fantasy-fuelled epic: Fantastic Beasts 2.

Pegged to arrive late next year, the Harry Potter spinoff has bolstered its ranks quite considerably over the past few months, adding Jude Law (the young Albus Dumbledore) and Wolf Roth as a character called Spielman, along with Victoria Yeates, Derek Riddell and Brontis Jodorowsky (El Topo, Endless Poetry), the latter of whom is attached to play Nicolas Flamel.

That’s a character who will be overly familiar to Potterheads, given his instrumental, if indirect role in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. If you’re in need of a history lesson, Flamel was the alchemist who discovered the elusive Elixir of Life, which would later fall into the hands of Quirinus Quirrell,...

What better way to pep up Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2 than to cast the son of an actual magician as Philosopher’s Stone creating alchemist Nicholas Flamel? That’s probably why Brontis Jodorowsky, son of Alejandro Jodorowsky, has been cast as the character. Now, you may be asking yourself, “who the hell is that and why should I care?” which is understandable given that his film career to date has largely consisted of very strange, arthouse movies directed by his awesome dad (who’s seriously a straight-up magician).

First seen as a child in the original midnight movie El Topo back in 1970, Brontis has more recently played his own tyrannical grandfather in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s two autobiographic movies, The Dance of Reality and Endless Poetry, in which (in my humble opinion) he was downright amazing. Despite that, the audience for Jodorowsky’s typically bonkers fare is a bit limited,...

Some new casting information has surfaced for David Yates' Fantastic Beasts sequel. The announcement comes from Pottermore and it reveals some new characters being introduced to the film and we learn a little bit about some of them and their ties to the books.

One of the main characters revealed is Nicolas Flamel and he will be played by Brontis Jodorowsky (El Topo, Endless Poetry). The character was originally mentioned in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Flamel is known in the wizarding world as an alchemist who discovered the Elixir of Life and he's based on the real-life alchemist of the same name. The report goes on to offer details on the other characters that have been cast:

So far, only a few names have been revealed, but some surnames will be familiar to Harry Potter fans. Joining the cast will be Wolf Roth as a character...

It's a good time to be Harry Potter superfan Jessica Williams. Pottermore announced Friday that the Daily Show alum has been cast in an undisclosed role in Warner Bros.' untitled Fantastic Beasts sequel. "Hello There," she tweeted after the news came out. "I Am Screaming Because I Am Going To Be In Fantastic Beasts." Screenwriter J.K. Rowling said she is "soooooo happy" for the actress, and after Williams thanked her three times, the author responded with an owl emoji, explaining, "There's no purple heron emoji, so." Fans will also get to see Brontis Jodorowsky as alchemist Nicolas Flamel, a character first mentioned in Rowling's debut novel, Harry Potter and the...

Jessica Williams has joined Warner Bros.' sequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2.

Brontis Jodorowsky, Fiona Glascott, Wolf Roth, Victoria Yeates, Derek Riddell, Poppy Corby-Tuech and Cornell S John have also signed on for the follow-up, it was announced on Pottermore.

David Yates, who also helmed four Harry Potter installments, is returning to direct the second film of the Harry Potter prequel series, which is planned to span five movies and feature screenplays by author J.K. Rowling. The first film was released in November 2016 and grossed $814 million worldwide.

Eddie Redmayne — who stars in the series as a 1920s magizoologist named Newt...

Brontis Jodorowsky and Jessica Williams join the cast

The post New Fantastic Beasts 2 Cast Members Revealed, Including Pivotal Character appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

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 ...

Exclusive: Marc Zinga stars in war drama.

Paris-based sales agent Other Angle has boarded Gabriel Le Bomin’s Second World War drama Our Patriots about real-life Senegalese resistance fighter Addi Bâ.

Marc Zinga plays Bâ, who was nicknamed “der schwarze terrorist” (the black terrorist) by the Germans for his role in a French resistance division operating in the Vosges in eastern France.

Louane Emera, who shot to fame in the role of the talented musical daughter Paula Belier in box office hit La Famille Belier, and Alexandra Lamy are also in the cast as the women who helped hide Bâ from the Germans. Further cast members include Pierre Deladonchamps.

Other Angle chief Olivier Albou says the film is in a similar vein to Rachid Bouchareb’s Days Of Glory.

“There aren’t that many films looking at the role Africans played in fighting the Germans and none, as far as I know, about black resistance...

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,...

Endless Poetry

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Writer: Alejandro Jodrowsky

Chilean auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky has been incredibly productive since breaking his twenty-three year hiatus in filmmaking with 2013’s The Dance of Reality—he appeared as the subject of a documentary on his failed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune the same year and has also published a successful comic Showman Killer, about to release its second volume. The energetic director funded his latest project, Endless Poetry, via a Indiegogo campaign, a co-production between Chile, Japan, and France that sees the continuation of the autobiographical elements in The Dance of Reality. Filming commenced in July with cinematographer Christopher Doyle on board.

Cast: Brontis Jodorowsky, Pamela Floris, Adan Jodorowsky

Production Co.: Satori Films, Uplink Co., Le Soleil Films

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available. Tbd (domestic) Tbd (international).

Release Date: With Jodorowsky last appearing in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, we’re hoping to...

Alejandro Jodorowsky is gearing up for a sequel to "The Dance Of Reality." The picture is called "Endless Poetry," and finds the filmmaker gathering together Dante Jodorowsky, Adan Jodorowsky, Brontis Jodorowsky, Pamela Flores, and Leandro Taub for the fantastical telling of "Jodorowsky’s teenage years in Santiago, Chile" chronicling "his struggle to overcome family pressure and find his path as an artist and a poet." A crowd-funding campaign for the low-budget movie kicks off later this month. [Variety] Alex De la Iglesia ("Witching & Bitching," "The Last Circus") will next direct the comedy "My Big Night." The story "unspools at a lavish New Year’s Eve TV show, where the frenzied fake bonhomie contrasts with the shoot date – a sweltering mid-August – the participants’ actions and sentiments, and the solitude of the studio’s setting." Filming starts this month. [Variety] "The Guest"...

Feature marks first co-production between Chile, Japan and France.

Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky is launching a Kickstarter campaign for his upcoming feature Endless Poetry (Poesia Sin Fin), which marks the first ever co-production between Chile, Japan and France.

Paris-based Satori Films is joining forces with Chile’s Le Soleil Films and Japan’s Uplink Co on the Spanish-language project, a continuation of Jodorowsky’s autobiographical The Dance Of Reality, which premiered in Cannes’ Directors Fortnight in 2013.

The Kickstarter campaign will be launched on February 15, with an announcement by Jodorowsky on YouTube Live (http://www.poesiasinfin.com).

While The Dance Of Reality focused on Jodorowsky’s unhappy childhood in Tocopilla, on the edge of the Atacama Desert, Endless Poetry revolves around his life as a poet in Santiago during the 1940s.

His sons, Adan and Brontis Jodorowsky, will star in the film, which Jodorowsky plans to shoot in Chile this summer. His partner...

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 ]

The post The Dance of Reality Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

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...

Tenth edition of Glasgow Film Festival, running Feb 20-March 2 announces guest lineup.

Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss and film-maker Terry Gilliam are among the guests set to attend the upcoming Glasgow Film Festival.

Dreyfuss will be attending the UK premiere of Cas & Dylan on Feb 22, where he will also be accompanied by the film’s director, Beverly Hills 90210’s Jason Priestley.

Gilliam will be in attendance at the screening of The Zero Theorem on Feb 27.

Other guests confirmed include Under the Skin director Jonathan Glazer and star Paul Brannigan for the festival’s closing gala on March 2; director David Mackenzie for Starred Up; magician Rickey Jay for the UK premiere of new documentary Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay; Mary Queen of Scots director Thomas Imbach; and Brontis Jodorowsky to talk about his father’s latest film The Dance of Reality.

Guests previously announced for this year’s tenth edition include The Double director [link=nm...

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...

The 42nd edition of the Festival du nouveau cinéma will be held in Montreal from October 9 to the 20th, showcasing the best new films and filmmakers from around the world. The festival which has often been described as ‘ baby-tiff’ picks up the best from Berlinale, Cannes, Venice, Telluride, Toronto and more. This new edition demonstrates the vibrancy of filmmaking in all its forms and for all audiences with an incredible 273 films (146 feature films and 124 shorts) from 47 countries – including (count them) 39 world premieres, 33 North American premieres and 47 Canadian premieres. I will be breaking down the line-up throughout the day, starting with the opening and closing films.

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Opening and Closing Films

This year the Festival will open with the film Triptych by Robert Lepage and Pedro Pires (Quebec). Wednesday, October 9, the festival will have the chance to meet Robert Lepage at the opening of the event ten years after The Dark of...

Bucheon, South Koreea -- Brontis Jodorowsky’s first screen role involved shooting someone from point-blank range, walking past bloodied villagers falling foul of a massacre, being asked to bury a picture of his mother to mark becoming a man and then finally seeing himself abandoned by his father – a lot to take in, perhaps, for a 6-year-old. Adding to the complications is that El Topo was directed by his father, Alejandro Jodorowsky – who also plays his papa in the film, an acid western that revolves around a brutal gunslinger’s quest in killing his rivals, his rebirth as

read more...

Brontis Jodorowsky, Shinji Higuchi, Choi Yong-bae and Benjamin Illos also on jury

The 17th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) has announced today its Puchon Choice feature competition jury will be headed by Singaporean director Eric Khoo (Tatsumi).

Khoo is joined by actor Brontis Jodorowsky (El Topo), son of Alejandro Jodorowsky who is the focus of a retrospective this year; Japanese filmmaker Shinji Higuchi, best known for his writing and storyboard art on Evangelion films, Korean producer Choi Yong-bae (The Host), and Benjamin Illos, member of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection committee.

The Puchon Choice jury will award a total of $22,200 (KW25m) in six categories including best film, director, actor and actress.

PiFan also announced that this year’s Producers’ Choice awards will go to actor Lee Byung-hun (G.I. Joe, Masquerade) and actress Gianna Jun, a.k.a. Jun Ji-hyun (The Berlin File), upon the festival’s opening on July 18.

Launched last year, the annual...

Photo: Abkco Movie: El Topo Release Year: 1970 Studio: MGM Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky as El Topo, Brontis Jodorowsky as young son of El Topo, Mara Lorenzio as Mara, David Silva as The Colonel, Bertha Lomeli as Gypsy, Mother of Master #2, Juan Jose Gurrola as Master #2, Victor Fosado as Master #3, Agustin Isunza as Master #4, Jacqueline Luis as Small woman and Robert John as elder son of El Topo Cinematographer: Rafael Corkidi (The Holy Mountain) Photo: Abkco Photo: Abkco Photo: Abkco Photo: Abkco This is one of my favorite shots in the entire film.Photo: Abkco Photo: Abkco I'd never seen any of Jodorowsky's films before El Topo, but the clear influence his films have had on a number of filmmakers from Nicolas Winding Refn to David Lynch are visible, but one I hadn't heard many discuss was Tarsem Singh (The Fall). Singh's The Fall seems like it's almost a...

Alejandro Jodorowsky's first film for more than two decades is a triumphant return, which mixes autobiography, politics, torture and fantasy to exuberant, moving effect

The extinct volcano of underground cinema has burst into life once again — with a bizarre, chaotic and startling film; there are some longueurs and gimmicks, but The Dance of Reality is an unexpectedly touching and personal work. At the age of 84, and over 20 years since his last movie, Alejandro Jodorowsky has returned to his hometown of Tocopilla in the Chilean desert to create a kind of magic-realist memoir of his father, Jaime Jodorowsky, a fierce Communist whose anger at the world — at his son — was redoubled by the anti-Semitism the family faced.

Of course, the entire story is swathed in surreal mythology, dream logic and instant day-glo legend, resmembling Fellini, Tod Browning, Emir Kusturica, and many more. You can't be sure how to extract conventional autobiography from this.

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...

Brontis Jodorowsky, yes, the son of the infamous Alejandro Jodorowsky, is starring in Táu, the feature film debut from director Daniel Castro Zimbron. A man travels to the desert of Wirikuta and confronts his deepest pain. We have the trailer for your perusal, and it seems as though that one-line synopsis is fairly accurate. The film is making its rounds on the festival circuit, having just played at Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. ...

Syfy and Korean monsters, machine-gun-toting Japanese schoolgirls, and some re-releases are the topics of this week's horror titles.

While Dinoshark (directed by Kevin O'Neill and starring Eric Balfour, Iva Hasperger, Aaron Diaz, Humberto Busto, Roger Corman) and Mongolian Death Worm (directed by Steven R. Monroe and starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Victoria Pratt) were on cable TV only recently, they're already here on home video. On top of that Chawz, the "Jaws with a wild boar" offering from Korea, and the hilariously unbelievable Machine Girl are vying for your purse strings all way from the Far East.

For the classically inclined, re-releases of Roger Corman's The Terror with a young Jack Nicholson, The Dorm That Dripped Blood, El Topo, as well as Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia 13 will keep you company this week.

The Terror

Directed by Roger Corman

Starring Jack Nicholson, Boris Karloff, Sandra Knight

In one of his first-ever roles,...