Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s name has been on everyone’s lips as of late after Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary telling of the Chilean filmmaker’s failed attempt to bring Frank Herbert‘s novel to the big screen, made such a big splash beginning at the Cannes Film Festival last year. Well, also last year at Cannes, Jodorowsky’s first film in 23 years premiered, that being The Dance of Reality, a story of his childhood told as only Jodorowsky can tell it, which is to say it has a vision all its own.
My personal experience with Jodorowsky is limited as I introduced myself to his most popular feature, El Topo (1970), just last year with a wordless exploration of screen captures from the feature, but I am proud to have the chance to introduce you to his latest feature with the following exclusive clip.
Set for release on May 23, this autobiographical feature is said to include compelling characters that contributed to Jodorowsky’s burgeoning surreal consciousness. This includes Pamela Flores as seen in this clip playing a character that strongly resembles (at least to me) Maria Antonietta Beluzzi‘s character in Federico Fellini‘s Amarcord, a semi-autobiographical film in its own right and perhaps a connection the two filmmakers share.
Sure enough, I’m saying nothing at all surprising to Jodorowsky as says within the press notes for the film:
My mother had huge breasts and I looked for an actress with a big bust. If you show a voluptuous woman, one thinks of Fellini; if you show a dwarf, one thinks of Buñuel; if you show a freak, one thinks of Tod Browning. But in fact, that was my life in my village. All the elements of my childhood are there.
Check out the clip for yourself directly below along with the trailer and several pictures from the movie.
The Dance of Reality marks the triumphant return of Alejandro Jodorowsky, the visionary Chilean filmmaker behind cult classics El Topo and The Holy Mountain. In the radiantly visceral autobiographical film, a young Jodorowsky is confronted by a collection of compelling characters that contributed to his burgeoning surreal consciousness. The legendary filmmaker was born in 1929 in Tocopilla, a coastal town on the edge of the Chilean desert, where the film was shot. Blending his personal history with metaphor, mythology, and poetry, The Dance of Reality reflects Jodorowsky’s philosophy that reality is not objective but rather a “dance” created by our own imaginations.
