Over the weekend, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s recent Kickstarter campaign made its goal of $300,000 and was closing in on $370,000 with five days to go at the time of this posting. It looks to me like it might end up just beyond the $400,000 mark.

My girlfriend and I supported the campaign to make Endless Poetry a reality, and I’ve been posting to the film’s poetry archive via Twitter. I don’t write poetry as often as I do critical writing, songwriting, blogging etc. I usually feel moved to actually practice poetry with more attention in the fall, but this year that didn’t really happen.

I’m really happy that this Jodorowsky archive has popped up as its given me a framework and a set of rules for writing poems and I’ve found it to be completely engaging. People think writer’s block denotes a lack of ideas, but, in fact it’s usually an abundance of ideas that stops the process, and it’s often limits and lacking that finally stoke the fires again. Of course, Twitter poetry is nothing new and I’m sure lots of poets have found the character limit inspiring — a Silicon Valley haiku of sorts. Search #EndlessPoetryMyPoem on Twitter to find my verses and read through the other intense, lovely, hilarious words on offer there.

Consider throwing a few bucks to the Kickstarter campaign before it’s over. Here’s the magician himself talking about money and desire at a Zen center in Japan…

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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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From the 1970′s through the 1990′s, Derek Jarman was the at the bleeding edge of experimental film-making in Britain. Two decades after his death, the man behind Caravaggio and The Garden is the subject of a new documentary by Andy Kimpton-Nye. The film features Tilda Swinton, Peter Tatchell and Tariq Ali. Here’s a few words from The Gospel According to St. Derek‘s Kickstarter page…

Derek Jarman was an artist, film-maker, gardener, nurturer of young talent, set-designer and writer. He was born in January 1942 and died in February 1994, losing a 7-year-long battle against AIDS. He was a truly talented artist and an extraordinary man – like of which we have not seen since. His astounding body of films include Sebastiane, Jubilee, The Tempest, Angelic Conversation, Caravaggio, The Last of England, War Requiem, The Garden, Edward II, Wittgenstein and Blue.

Keep your eyes peeled as the film will likely see a UK release in the coming weeks which will probably find it coming to the US in some form later this year. In the meantime, here’s a Jarman doc that will fill in the blanks for newbies and serve as a appetizer for the Jarman-savvy. It’s called Derek Jarman: Life as Art…

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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.