HALLOWEEN SCREENING OF THE HOLY MOUNTAIN AT MoMA
FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER UNSPOOLS EL TOPO THE FOLLOWING EVENING
CONVERSATIONS WITH JODOROWSKY FOLLOW BOTH SCREENINGS
The Museum of Modern Art has announced Modern Mondays: An Evening With Alejandro Jodorwosky on Monday, October 31 (Halloween) starting at 7 PM. The program serves as a coda to the exhibition of Jodorowsky’s work that was organized at MoMA PS1 earlier this year by Klaus Biesenbach, Director of MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art, and is presented in conjunction with To Save and Project: The Ninth MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, organized by Joshua Siegel, Associate Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art. Jodorowsky (b. 1929, Chile) will introduce his visionary 1973 cult film The Holy Mountain, which famously played for 16 straight months at New York’s Waverly Theater. The film is presented courtesy of ABKCO Films.
Following the screening in MoMA’s Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2 and presented in conjunction with To Save and Project: The Ninth MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, Jodorowsky will take part in an onstage conversation with Klaus Biesenbach, and Joshua Siegel. Biesenbach and Siegel organized “An Evening with Alejandro Jodorowsky”.
The Holy Mountain is a surreal and picaresque satire depicting the journey of a Christ-like figure, the Thief, to a symbolic mountain that is said to unite Heaven and Earth. Playing the character of the Alchemist both on and off screen, Jodorowsky immersed his actors in months of preparatory spiritual and occult exercises, and was also responsible for the costume, set designs and for co-writing the musical score.
Tickets are $12 adults; $10 seniors, $8 full–time students. Admission is free for Museum members and for Museum ticket holders. Click here for tickets and info.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center will screen El Topo, Jodorowsky’s earlier masterwork on the evening of Tuesday, November 1 at 6 PM, also presented courtesy of ABKCO Films, Inc. Following the screening, Jodorowsky will take part in an on-stage conversation with the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Program Director Richard Peña.
El Topo is a fascinating collision of Sixties avant-garde theater, Latin American symbolism, European radical cinema and the furthest reaches of the western genre. El Topo chronicles the exploits of a master gunfighter and cosmic mystic (played by director Jodorowsky himself) as he sets out to do battle with four sinister, sharp-shooting rivals.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono declared the film a masterpiece, and the rest was history: Jodorowsky’s film became an international cult classic and was one of the key works to establish the concept of the “midnight movie.” Now lovingly restored, El Topo feels no less provocative than when first released, but today also evidences a kind of multicultural fusion that puts it far ahead of its time.
The FSLC screening of El Topo will take place at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65 St. Tickets are $13 general public; $9 students & seniors; $8 FSLC members. Click here for tickets and info and click here for both El Topo and The Holy Mountain which are available on Blu-ray and DVD from ABKCO Films.
