COURTESY INDIEGOGO
Don’t let Alejandro Jodorowsky’s latest feature film, Endless Poetry (Poesía Sin Fin), go the way of the famously unfinished Dune! Accompanying an Indiegogo campaign, which has raised $42,368 of the goal of $150,000 in six days, Jodorowsky appears in a six-minute film explaining why he needs the contributions to fund the film’s postproduction.
“How can an auteur [filmmaker] survive with American cinema’s colonization of the entire world?” asks the 86-year-old Chilean director. “We are slaves to the economy, then we go to the cinema to distract ourselves for an hour and a half, and when we leave, we become constricted once again. Nothing has changed in our lives. A true piece of art has to change the very spirit of people. When I go to a theater, I should exist [as] a different person. The movie must give me something—hope, knowledge, a hidden beauty kept inside that I didn’t even know was there.”
Endless Poetry is described as a film about Jodorowsky as a young man, who is on a journey to find beauty in the world, in himself, and in other people. The plot is set in the 1940s and ’50s in Santiago, and follows Jodorowsky’s adventures as a member of “the foremost bohemian and artistic circle of the time,” where he meets promising young writers and artists such as Enrique Lihn, Stella Diaz Varín, and Nicanor Parra.
“And we’re doing it without talking about guns, kicks to the head, collapsing buildings, about killer robots, or super-men that have come to show us that this is the country that will save the world!” Jodorowsky effuses, adding, “I won’t name names.” (Michael Bay.)
The film, which began shooting on July 1, will be completed in three weeks, and the team only has enough money left for editing. Potential contributors, know that your money will be spent on adding music; sounds of footsteps, dogs, and nature; color correction; and voice dubbing, among other elements of post-production. So instead of going to see the extremely poorly rated Fantastic Four, why not donate the price of a ticket to a cinematic work of art? You’ll have a much better time.