“Little Murders” (1971) is a dark comedy based on a play written by Jules Feiffer and was the first feature film directed by Alan Arkin. The plot centers on vivacious interior designer Patsy who falls in love with photographer Alfred after saving him from a beating, despite (or because of) his physical and emotional passivity. The film’s comedic elements stem from Patty’s attempts to break Alfred out of his shell and their opposite approaches in dealing with the insanity of the world around them. Little Murders is memorable for its over-the-top nihilistic conclusion and great performances by Elliot Gould, Marcia Rodd, Alan Arkin and Donald Sutherland (as a hippy priest officiating one of cinema’s funniest wedding scenes).
Alejandro Jodorowsky, father of the midnight movie, wants to exchange your money into Poetic Money to make his latest film.
About this project
I was trying not to prepare anything. I didn’t want to prepare what I was going to say to you. Why? Because I am searching for my inner truth, I want to know what will I say. In two more days I will be 86 years old… it’s a lot. Why, at 86 years of age, am I fighting to make a picture? Why? Nothing is that important for me. Is it so important for a person who can die one day to the other, to make a picture? Because when you are 86 years old, every morning you awake and you say “I am still alive”. You are happy to be alive but you are maybe at the end of something. Why make a picture? What is a picture? Some pictures are only fun and show. It’s necessary, because in the world we are all nervous about everything that’s happening, no? They even say we are destroying the planet. So we need to go, to see a picture, to forget ourselves. Perhaps this is necessary, but for me a picture is not that. For me a picture is for remembering your self, not for forgetting yourself. But what does it mean to remember your self? What can we remember? For me, movies are really an art. And what is art? It is the search for your inner beauty. That is art. I don’t want to make a picture in order to make money. But if money comes, I open the pocket in order to make more pictures. But that’s not the finality. It’s not the finality to being admired by others. It’s not the finality to lie and invent things you’ve never lived.
In order to say something you need to know the thing you’re speaking of. It needs to be an experience, what you show on the screen. What will I show in this picture? What are human beings, art, museums and movie theatres showing to us? Are we those anti-heroes? Those people who have no dignity? We are slaves? We are liars? Thieves? What are we now? I don’t want to show that kind of person. I don’t know how to make pictures of everyone fighting one another, to have money, to steal money Why ?! I don’t want to speak about “love” either; about this “love” that isn’t real, that’s a fairytale. Love is something great, incredible, “sublime”… I don’t know how you say “sublime” in English… The most beautiful thing. Marpa was a saint in Tibet and he said “ Life, everything, is an illusion”. One day his son died, his young son died and he was crying and crying and crying and the disciples asked Marpa “Why are you crying? Your son is an illusion.” “Yes, my son is an illusion. But he is the most beautiful illusion.” Movies are an illusion but need to be the most beautiful illusion. I know what it’s like to scream because one of your sons died. It’s terrible. It’s terrible And in that moment you ask yourself, “ Why am I doing art, movies? Why?!” and then you say I am making movies and art in order to heal my soul. I need to open! Open ! open ! myself, in order to fin myself. To remember what the human being is. The beautifulness of the human being. The beautifulness of you. I need to show how beautiful the human being is. Now.
In Chile, in the forties, I was 24 years old… it was a fantastic moment. The war was all over the planet, and in Chile : no war. Because we are far and separate of the world: no television, mountains, ocean, peace! It was so peaceful. It was beautiful. And then a miracle happened : Poetry came to the country. Great poets started to write marvelous, marvelous poems; two of them have the Nobel Prize, Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral – our father and our mother.
And then, everything was poetry. We were living our adolescence in this situation: poetry everywhere. And we started to search for the “poetical act”. For how it was to live with beautifulness. How it was to live in the mind: free! In heart : in union with world. In the sex: in full creativity.
How to make poetical action in order to discover the beautifulness of Life. There it was. In that time, the poetry was there. The human being was there. We had love, we had artists, we discovered all kinds of art.
And that suddenly disappeared. When I was 24 I left this paradise, and went to Europe where the world is illusion or disillusion, you don’t know.
But now I want to show what a spiritual paradise is: a young person, searching for the beautifulness of poetry. That is all that I want. I want to express… how to say it in English?… How I am obliged to this past… because I knew how it was to live in poetry. I knew that. And I want to show the world that it’s possible. It’s possible to remember your self. It’s possible to open your mind. It’s possible to open your heart. It’s possible to open your creativity. To live with less, but to live well. Well. That is what I want. Poetry without end. Endless Poetry. That is what I will do.
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.
Synopsis
Leaving his childhood and his native Tocopilla behind, the adolescent Alejandro Jodorowsky follows his parents to Santiago de Chile. Between his lack of self-confidence and the family pressure he is under, Alejandro struggles to express his desires and find his own path. But the flourishing capital, filled with artists and poets offers the perfect setting for him to grow out of his cage. Thinking he’d fit in well, Alejandro’s cousin Ricardo takes the young boy to the home of Veronica and Carmen Cereceda, where puppeteers, dancers, sculptors and painters all live and create together. There, defying all of his old limitations, Alejandro takes the first step on his path to becoming a poet in the Chilean artistic epicenter of the 1940s. Alongside rising poets like Enrique Linh, Nicanor Parra and in the arms of his first love, Stella Diaz, Alejandro’s poetic destiny takes form and a new world unravels … changing his life forever.
Production Schedule and Budget
The film will be shot in Santiago de Chile from July to August 2015 for eight weeks. Its post-production such as editing, music tracks, visual effects and so forth will take place in Paris and Tokyo with completion slated for the end of February 2016. The total buget will be about three million dollars.
Why Kickstarter?
Alejandro Jodorowsky says; « The necessity for expression is more important than the type of film you want to make. I make a film when I have something I need to express. I don’t think about investors, industries or commercialisation. I just need to express myself.
In order to realize Jodorowsky’s new film production, we need the support of micro producers across the world who understand his vision of cinema.
Jodorowsky’s Poetic Money
Jodorowsky thinks that all money should be transformed into poetry. And so that is what he will do with this Kickstarter project. No matter what level you pledge at, Jodorowsky will exchange your pledge into his brand new Poetic Money (DINERO POÉTICO) and send it back to you. This money can’t be spent on any material goods — only on the poetry of the universe.
The exchange rate is 1US$＝1DP.
(In the case of $10,000 or more pledge, it is 0.5US$=1DP）
There are 3 bill denominations: 1DP, 10DP and 100DP. Each bill has an original money-related poem written by Jodorowsky printed on it in Spanish. There are two versions of each DP bill, each version of the bill presenting a different poem. There are 6 kinds of bills in total.
Jodorowsky wants to fill the world with poetry. So when you pledge, please mumble a poem in your heart. If you have a twitter account, please tweet a poem with #EndlessPoetryMyPoem. Your poem will be on the official site of ENDLESS POETRY (Poesía Sin Fin).
Jodorowsky’s Poems About Money and Wealth
<1 Dinero Poético>
1 dinero poético – A
Money is like the Buddha; you can’t obtain it unless you work for it. If you keep it from flowing, it disappears.
1 dinero poético – B
To those who use it to make the flower of the world blossom, money gives its light. Those who glorify themselves, mistaking wealth for the soul, money destroys.
<10 Dinero Poético>
10 dinero poético – A
In pursuance of wealth I throw a spear through the Goddess and bathe in her blood.
10 dinero poético – B
Just as gold does not cease to shine when clouds cover the sun, the soul, beneath flesh and bone, continues to glow with its own light.
<100 Dinero Poético>
100 dinero poético – A
There is no difference between money and consciousness.
There is no difference between consciousness and death.
There is no difference between death and wealth.
100 dinero poético – B
Money is like blood: it gives life if it flows.
Money is like the Christ: it blesses you if you share it.
Money is like a woman: it offers itself to you if you cherish it.
An interesting analysis of the corporate themes in Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (note: original video was removed by author but will be available on Rob Ager films & articles volume 7 at his site. This shorter version is still up at the moment):
The creator of the video, Rob Ager, has a number of equally intriguing film dissections on his YouTube channel and website for other genre classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, The Matrix, Starship Troopers and Alien.
Bonus Clip: Ager’s first impressions of Mad Max 4: Fury Road
You must see or revisit Norman Jewison’s 1975 film Rollerball, starring James Caan as superstar player Jonathan E.
In it, we see a world no longer made up of countries, but of corporations that control every bit of life for the people. There are no longer wars, just a complacent populace who “go along to get along.”
A very select few are chosen by the corporations to become executives, giving them elite status. It seems everyone loves the violent sport Rollerball, which is like our current NFL football on steroids.
Jonathan E. is their Michael Jordan or Lebron James superplayer who is revered worldwide, even by the fans of opposing teams. He has everything a man could wish to have: a fine sprawling ranch, with servants and horses, and gorgeous female companions chosen for him by the Energy corporation that rules Houston and the surrounding areas.
Yet, even someone as popular and valued as he must sacrifice, such as when the corporation took away his wife and gave her to an executive. There is a scene in the film, when the highest corporation board decides they want Jonathan E. to retire due to the fear that his popularity has become too great. A man like that becomes too influential, thus too dangerous to control.
They send his ex wife, whom he still pines for, to visit him at his ranch and get him to agree to retire without any complications. They go for a walk and he expresses reservations about doing this. He tells her of his newfound epiphany about their society.
He knows now that the corporations long ago offered them all the choice between freedom and comfort… and the masses chose the latter. Her brief answer becomes the gist of the whole film: “Comfort IS freedom.”
And that is what we have here in 21st Century Amerika for many of our fellow citizens. The “Good German” lives on.
To study Nazi Germany in the early 40s allows us to see how the German public, to a great degree, was either apathetic or voluntarily blind as to what their regime was doing. Kristallnact was not an event that went unseen or even unheard about by multitudes of German citizens.
When the Wehrmacht invaded Russia along with the SS death squads, word did leak out through many soldiers of what had transpired. Even the most heinous of all crimes committed by the Nazis, the death camps AKA Concentration Camps, was not totally kept from the populace as many revisionists have always alleged. When tons of human hair and millions of personal effects were shipped back to companies in Germany, surely word got out.
We can, and we should forgive, the many Germans who did care about the terrible wrongs of their government at that time. Why? Well, it was a police state and dissent was stomped out rather brutally. Not everyone can be as heroic as Sophie Scholl and her brother and friends, to risk being tortured and finally beheaded.
Yet, there is this terrible pain that gnaws at this writer. That being the pain of realizing how many out there just do NOT give a shit unless it is happening to one of their own!
The late and great New Orleans district attorneyJim Garrison, who Oliver Stone centered his fine film JFK on, understood so much more than many of his peers in the 1960s. Years after his defeat in the case against Clay Shaw and others for the assassination of JFK, Garrison wrote this:
“What worries me deeply is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours is based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. It’s origins can be traced to the tremendous war machine we’ve built since 1945, the ‘Military Industrial Complex’ that Eisenhower vainly warned us against, which now dominates every aspect of our lives… In a very real and terrifying sense, our government IS the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a ‘debating society.'”
Cassius had said it most succinctly: “The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars but in our selves.”
(Philip A. Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He is a freelance columnist (found on Nation of Change Blog, Truthout.org, TheSleuthJournal.com, Worldnewstrust.com, The Intrepid Report, The Peoples Voice, Information Clearing house, Dandelion Salad, Activist Post, Dissident Voice and many other sites worldwide). Philip works as an environmental products sales rep and has been an activist leader since 2000. In 2010 he became a local spokesperson for the 25% Solution Movement to Save Our Cities by cutting military spending 25%. Philip can be reached at PAF1222@bellsouth.net)
“The Brother From Another Planet” (1984) is a thinly veiled sci-fi race allegory from writer/director/editor/actor John Sayles. Joe Morton plays “the Brother” a mute alien slave who crash lands near Harlem while trying to evade his alien oppressors. The Brother looks similar to a human black man but has three toes and telekinetic abilities. The aliens in pursuit are similar in appearance to white government agents (one of whom is played by John Sayles). Though dated and low budget, the film is recommended for its great lead performance from Joe Morton and an intelligently humorous script.
“Medianeras” (2011) depicts the quirky and serendipitous road to romance between Martin, an agoraphobic web designer, and Mariana, an aspiring architect who live in neighboring apartment buildings in Buenos Aires. Medianeras is the first feature film from writer/director Gustavo Taretto who creates a nice balance of quirkiness and realism in a story that has as much to say about the alienation and chaos of urban life as the humanistic potential of communications technology.
To view with English subtitles, click the “cc” button on the bottom left corner of the video window. Then click the “settings” button next to it, click “Spanish (automatic captions)”, click “translate captions”, scroll to “English” and click “ok”.
“if…” (1968) is one of the all-time classic student rebellion films directed by notorious anarchist Lindsay Anderson. In his first screen role, Malcolm McDowell stars as the oppressed non-conformist Mick Travis who with a few cohorts, stage an armed revolution in their school. According to the film’s Wikipedia entry, shortly before Lindsay Anderson’s death in 1994 he had completed the script for a yet unmade official sequel to “if…” (not to be confused with the other films in the Mick Travis trilogy, “O Lucky Man” and Britannia Hospital”) described as follows:
The sequel takes place during a Founders’ Day Celebration where many of the characters reunite. Mick Travis is now an Oscar-nominated movie star, eschewing England for Hollywood. Wallace is a military major who has lost his arm. Johnny is a clergyman. Rowntree is the Minister of War. In the script Rowntree is kidnapped by a group of anti-war students and saved by Mick and his gang, though not before Mick crucifies Rowntree with a large nail through his palm.
“Vital” (2004) is a film by Shinya Tsukamoto about a med school student who loses his memory after surviving a car crash which kills his girlfriend. Shortly after resuming studies he realizes a cadaver assigned to him to dissect is the body of his girlfriend. Against the advice of everyone around him, he becomes obsessed with his work in an effort to recover his memories and former sense of self. Like other films by Shinya Tsukamoto, Vital has much psychological conflict, Cronenbergian body horror and surreal imagery, but is more subdued and life-affirming than any other feature film he’s made to date. Vital also features a masterful performance from lead actor Tadanobu Asano.
After the Crash 