This year, master surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky — behind such cult classics as The Holy Mountain, El Topo and Santa Sangre — is returning to filmmaking for the first time since 1990. Debuting alongside the Chilean-French director’s latest work, The Dance of Reality, at Cannes Film Festival this past May was the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. Ahead of the U.S. releases for both, we’ve got the first domestic trailers and one-sheets today.
We were major fans of both films at the festival, saying in our review that his narrative, autobiographical film “features his signature avant-garde imagery which pushes the limits of what to expect from the unpredictable.” We were even more fond of the Frank Pavich-directed documentary on the filmmaker’s failed attempt at bringing Frank Herbert‘s sci-fi classic to the big screen. Featuring interviews with everyone from colleague Devin Faraci to close friend of the director, Nicolas Winding Refn, we said in our review, “never before has there been a documentary about lost cinema quite like it.”
As we look forward to the releases of both, check out each trailer and poster below, and be sure to carve out time to read our off-the-wall interview with the director himself.
Through interviews with legends and luminaries including HR Giger (artist, ALIEN), Gary Kurtz (producer, STAR WARS) and Nicolas Winding Refn (director, DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES), and an intimate and honest conversation with Jodorowsky filmed over the course of three years, director Pavich’s film – featuring never-before-seen realizations of Jodo’s mind-blowing psychedelic space opera (animated by Emmy Award nominated Syd Garon) – finally unearths the full saga of ‘The Greatest Movie Never Made’.
The legendary filmmaker was born in 1929 in Tocopilla, a coastal town on the edge of the Chilean desert, where this film was shot. It was there that Jodorowsky underwent an unhappy and alienated childhood as part of an uprooted family. 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.
Jodorowsky’s Dune opens on March 3rd, while The Dance of Reality hits theaters on May 23rd.
Are you looking forward to the return of Jodorowsky?