Props out to Ezra Buckley for hooking up a recent story about the death of Wilhelm Reich at Remnants. According to the Freud Quotes site the good doctor was…

Wilhelm Reich, psychoanalyst, political theorist, pioneer of body therapies and prophet of the sexual revolution died 59 years ago, on November 3, 1957.

Here’s their word on his controversial career…

Author of several influential books – most notably Character Analysis (1933), The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and The Sexual Revolution (1936) – Reich became known as one of the most radical practitioners of psychiatry.

Reich’s idea of “muscular armour” – the expression of the personality in the way the body moves – influenced innovations such as body psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy, bioenergetic analysis and primal therapy. His writing influenced generations of intellectuals; he invented the phrase “the sexual revolution”. During the 1968 student uprisings in Paris and Berlin, students scrawled his name on walls and threw copies of The Mass Psychology of Fascism at police.

Reich’s theories are fascinating as were his colorful life, his pioneering of the sexual revolution, his persecution and imprisonment by the U.S. government, and his controversial death. Read the whole story at the Feud Quotes site, and watch W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism – a confoundingly poetic celebration of Reich and his ideas. Here’s a bit from Roger Ebert’s review of the film…

In a real way, Makavejev is his films. Like Andrei Tarkovsky, Guy Maddin, Russ Meyer or Alejandro Jodorowsky, he cannot help but make the films he makes, and no others. In his early career in Yugoslavia, in movies like “Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator” (1967), he delighted in sneaking political parallels past the censors; he was not anti-communist but anti-authority. The man in charge of film funding in Yugoslavia was an old classmate of Makavejev’s. Faced with one of his scripts, the man sighed: “Dusan, Dusan, Dusan! I know what you are really saying in this screenplay, and you know what you are really saying. Now go home and revise it so only the audience knows…”

“WR,” for example, begins as a documentary about the Austrian analyst Wilhelm Reich, once Freud’s first assistant, later a communist, later an anti-communist, eventually an American, who believed the orgasm was the key to freedom and happiness, and possibly a cure for disease. His Orgone Accumulator was a box the size of a phone booth, wood on the outside, lined with metal, which he believed concentrated orgasmic energy within anyone sitting inside of it. Reich’s science was condemned by the FDA, his books were burned by the U.S. government, and he died in prison. You see how dangerous sex is.

Here’s the film…

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If you’re following this blog you’re probably a big fan of the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky. I love the man and his movies and last night, thanks to Antonia, we received a package from the master himself. It contained a postcard, a poster, and a hand-printed thank you note along with three bills of the master’s “poetic money.” We received this because my girlfriend, Antonia, was smart enough to respond to this call for support more than a year ago. Go here to see our bounty, and read on to find out more about Jodorowsky’s soon-to-be-released project…

Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of my favorite filmmakers, but that won’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows my posts. I’ve seen all of the master’s films and was particularly excited by last year’s release of both The Dance of Reality and the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. The former was Jodo’s most recent feature film and the elegiac tone of the movie felt a bit like a summing-up of a life and a career, and a few friends of mine even opined that they thought it would be the great magician’s last illusion.

Not so.

Taking a page from the younger set, Jodo has a new Kickstarter campaign underway to fund his next cinematic project. Here’s the skinny…

After a 23 yearlong absence, the director of cult classics El Topo (1969) and Holy Mountain (1973) made his comeback in film direction in 2013 with The Dance of Reality. The film was based on the first part of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s homonymous autobiographical book, depicting his childhood years in Tocopilla, Chile. His new film ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin) will be based on the latter half of the same book, depicting the author’s youth in lively Santiago de Chile.

Our world is suffering from a devastating absence of poetry. Naïvely we sometimes hope to reconnect with it through film. But the greed-riddled industry, having colonized this magnificent art form, has done everything to strip it of its poetic power. With this film, Jodorowsky directs his energy more than ever into creating a film that can serve as a vehicle for awaking consciousness. It is our duty to enable all efforts to fight the powers that insist on lowering cinema to just a product in a commercial market. This film will bring forth an example of film’s poetic power.

ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin) flashes back to those decisive years in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s youth; years that defined the principle that would reign over his entire life: Poetry. The director’s life has been a constant effort to expand his imagination and push back against his own limits in order to apprehend and harness the potential for liberation that lies within each and every one of us. His career has been an open invitation to follow him in his efforts.

ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin) will be carried out as an offering both to film and to the general audience, who are infinitely more profound, intelligent and sensitive than the Hollywood industry would like to admit.

ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin) explores the magic reality underlying our surrounding world. The film seeks to inspire and encourage us all to dare to find our true selves. It is an invitation to Life.

One of the coolest aspects of the campaign involves Jodo’s trading his donor’s actual cash for the special, gorgeous “Poetic Money” that he’s printed for the fundraiser. Check out his Kickstarter video…

Check out Jodorowsky’s Kickstarter here.

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Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Cinema posts.

Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of my favorite filmmakers, but that won’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows my posts. I’ve seen all of the master’s films and was particularly excited by last year’s release of both The Dance of Reality and the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. The former was Jodo’s most recent feature film and the elegiac tone of the movie felt a bit like a summing-up of a life and a career, and a few friends of mine even opined that they thought it would be the great magician’s last illusion.

Not so.

Taking a page from the younger set, Jodo has a new Kickstarter campaign underway to fund his next cinematic project. Here’s the skinny…

After a 23 yearlong absence, the director of cult classics El Topo (1969) and Holy Mountain (1973) made his comeback in film direction in 2013 with The Dance of Reality. The film was based on the first part of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s homonymous autobiographical book, depicting his childhood years in Tocopilla, Chile. His new film ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin) will be based on the latter half of the same book, depicting the author’s youth in lively Santiago de Chile.

Our world is suffering from a devastating absence of poetry. Naïvely we sometimes hope to reconnect with it through film. But the greed-riddled industry, having colonized this magnificent art form, has done everything to strip it of its poetic power. With this film, Jodorowsky directs his energy more than ever into creating a film that can serve as a vehicle for awaking consciousness. It is our duty to enable all efforts to fight the powers that insist on lowering cinema to just a product in a commercial market. This film will bring forth an example of film’s poetic power.

ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin) flashes back to those decisive years in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s youth; years that defined the principle that would reign over his entire life: Poetry. The director’s life has been a constant effort to expand his imagination and push back against his own limits in order to apprehend and harness the potential for liberation that lies within each and every one of us. His career has been an open invitation to follow him in his efforts.

ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin) will be carried out as an offering both to film and to the general audience, who are infinitely more profound, intelligent and sensitive than the Hollywood industry would like to admit.

ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin) explores the magic reality underlying our surrounding world. The film seeks to inspire and encourage us all to dare to find our true selves. It is an invitation to Life.

One of the coolest aspects of the campaign involves Jodo’s trading his donor’s actual cash for the special, gorgeous “Poetic Money” that he’s printed for the fundraiser. Check out his Kickstarter video…

Check out Jodorowsky’s Kickstarter here.

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You might not recognize the name Luis Barragán, but any student of counterculture and edgy film will recognize the great master’s work. The architect’s monumental sculptures play a key role in Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic The Holy Mountain though most viewers might assume they are looking at stage sets. Here’s some Wiki…

The Torres de Satélite (“Satélite Towers”) are located in Ciudad Satélite, in the northern part of Naucalpan, Mexico. One of the country’s first urban sculptures of great dimensions, had its planning started in 1957 with the ideas of renowned Mexican architect Luis Barragán, painter Jesús Reyes Ferreira and sculptor Mathias Goeritz. The project was originally planned to be composed of seven towers, with the tallest one reaching a height of 200 meters (about 650 feet),[citation needed] but a budget reduction forced the design to be composed of only five towers, with the tallest measuring 52 meters (170 feet) and the shortest 30 meters (98 feet).

Goeritz originally wanted the towers to be painted in different shades of orange, but changed his mind later due to some pressure from constructors and investors. It was finally decided the towers would be painted in red, blue and yellow, the so-called primary subtractive colors, with the addition of white.

The Satellite Towers play a pivotal role at the beginning of the film’s mind-blowing second act, and it’s important to recognize not only Jodorowsky’s use of existing structures, but also Barragán’s gorgeous, massive work. Here’s a cool drive-by video of the actual towers that demonstrates their perspective-warping designs…

The Ever-changing perspective view of Torres de Satélite – Luis Barragan from Jinglu on Vimeo.

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I’m planning to cover the Nashville International Film Festival for a variety of papers and blogs again this year. One of the films I’m most excited about is The Voice Thief by Alejandro Jodorowsky’s son, Adan who played the young boy in Santa Sangre.

Here is a profile of Adan who is a musician in Mexico City. It includes an conversation between Adan and his brother Christobel who is a painter and also a Tarot healer like his old man. Christobel suggests that today “avant garde” means an “art that can heal the world.”

Amen.

Enjoy!

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1980 wasn’t a great year for Alejandro Jodorowsky. Having just barely survived the end of the 1970′s when the film that was to be his magnum opus — an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic Dune — fell apart for the final time, Jodo was anxious to get back to work. He agreed to make a children’s film.

At first, the idea of the anarchist auteur making a movie for kids might sound odd, but Tusk (Poo Lorn L’Elephant) told a tale about the shared fate of an English girl and an Indian elephant. The story had the kind of spiritual overtones that Jodo had marshaled so furiously in The Holy Mountain and the coming of age tale shared some similarities with El Topo — even the Indian locations promised exotic settings that surely inspired the director.

Alas, a classic it was not meant to be. Tusk is roundly criticized by those who’ve been able to see it — the only home release is an un-subtitled French language version on VHS. Even Jodo has disowned the movie.

But is it really that bad? Isn’t the parallel birth scene at the beginning of the film remarkable? Doesn’t the fact that you can follow the film without knowing French say something about the master’s mastery of visual storytelling? Don’t you want to run out and find this prog/raga soundtrack on vinyl?

Here’s what the Cue Dot Confessions blog has to say:

If Jodorowsky’s mark is seen anywhere it is in the strong anti-colonial sentiment that runs through the film and in the scattered inconsistency of the message. Tusk is a film for children and viewed side by side with other slapstick-centric “ethnographic” films of that period (The Gods Must Be Crazy springs to mind), it could possibly be viewed as quite unremarkable, and yet the way that Jodorowsky handles the Indian landscape and its people still seems fresh and surprisingly natural. There are sweeping, long take crane shots that literally drink up all the vibrancy of country. The Indian extras act quite unselfconciously in the face of the stiff “acting” of the English and the bald, over-drawn comedy of the film’s villains.

Jodorowsky has an obvious affinity with India and an affection for the people and the animals. The elephant scenes, and there are many, are impressive in their National Geographic-ness even if they add little to the momentum of the film. These scenes make Tusk’s first half a joy to watch. Unfortunately, all of this freshness is squandered as the on again, off again romance, machinations, and motivations of the cast twist, overlap, lie dormant and then snap to life. By the time everything has fallen into a jumbled heap…

Regardless of its ultimate value in Jodorowsky’s oeuvre, Tusk is required viewing for any completist. Here is the film in its entirety:

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This week: Two lone wanderers return, the Tories hate Kim…a lot, Minority Report is getting closer, Surveillance Free day, Bradley update, Progressives get an open letter, we catch up with our lost heroes. Only God Forgives and The Holy Mountain, and much much more.

Personnel – Joe Nolan, Kim Monaghan, and Ken Eakins + SPECIAL GUESTS!

Linkypoops

David Cameron hates me – Link , Link

Retail Stores have new ways to track you – Link

The Surveillance-Free Day - Link

Bradley Manning verdict – Link

An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives – Link

The Holy Mountain at 40 – Link

Interludes

Chrome Hoof, The Lonely Island, Star Wars, and Arnie

Getting some links together for the latest Coincidence Control Network podcast, I was shocked that we hadn’t talked about the 40th anniversary of my favorite Alejandro Jodorowsky film The Holy Mountain. I’ve mentioned the film in previous posts, but this important birthday is one that must be observed with reverence and open eyes.

Check out this great retrospective which tracks our hero’s work from his earliest art projects through the making of his 1989 “comeback” film Santa Sangre. One Week Only: Alejandro Jodorowsky offers candid interviews with the master as well as lots of footage from El Topo and The Holy Mountain which the documentary describes as “Perhaps the ultimate acid trip on film”

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Here is the premiere of the new video for my song “Paradise.”

Conceived, directed and edited from public domain footage found at Archive.org, “Paradise” combines images of San Francisco in 1941 with shots from the city captured in 1968 during that era’s counter-cultural revolution. The video takes the song’s declarative chorus as a jumping-off point to celebrate the Utopian impulse that has defined that city.

Welcome to “Paradise”

“Paradise” appears on my CD BLUE TURNS BLACK.

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Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of my favorite artists of all time. One reason why I love this guy’s work so much is that he does it all: writer, director, actor, mime, magician, comic book author, tarot card expert. He’s completely brilliant and hilarious, and both of those traits are present in his films – which I highly recommend despite the fact that Jodo certainly isn’t for everybody.

Readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with Jodorowsky’s Western cum vision quest El Topo, but, for me, the director reaches his cinematic summit – so far – at the top of The Holy Mountain. Without question one of the most bizarre and visually stunning films anyone will ever see, critics who dismiss the plot as a mish-mash of New Age flotsam can be forgiven for not recognizing the gold Jodorowsky hid in the excrement.

Check out one of The Holy Mountain’s most famous scenes (NSFW):

Watch The Jodorowsky Constellation at my YouTube channel and read more about Jodorowsky’s magical philosophy on Joe Nolan’s Insomnia.

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