We spoke with Jodorowsky and Montandon-Jodorowsky about their ambitious experiment, their unusual approach to filmmaking, and why they view cinema as a healing art—not a business.
I needed them to write a letter saying, "I had this problem, so I did this Psychomagic act." We wanted the audience to feel real emotions because so many movies essentially create fake emotions with actors—theatrical emotions.
I'm not someone focused on having a script and a lot of money for some big industrial thing. You can make a $400 million film!"
Every person is a kind of artist and every person has something to say. We are thus proud of presenting you with his pre-”Danza de la Realidad” feature-length films as well as the breathtaking and jarring “Psychomagic” with which Jodorowsky is making his grand return.This website uses cookies to improve your experience.
For me, it worked very well. Psychoanalysis is a science, Psychomagic is an art. Alejandro Jodorowsky [a.le.ˈxan.ð̪ɾo xo.ð̪o.ˈɾov.ski] (* 17. Two of my films, As we made this picture, we were not showing things of the past. In the time we're in living in, only the material world is in place: dollars, yen, industry. In all of his movies, there is a journey between dreams and reality, but everything in them is truthful. Documentaries speak about reality, but they show what has happened in the past. If we saw that people's motives were anything other than to heal themselves, we stopped filming. I looked at the making of this picture like that. It's best to do it that way. When that very film, now world-famous, was screened in Acapulco, it triggered a lot of blasphemy and praise, and received both hatred and love…
I devote my life to it without treating it as a business.
No. I will see if I can do something for you or not." These movies are good for business and they allow people to have fun. Every Psychomagic act consisted of one shot, because it's not possible to 'remake' a Psychomagic act."
No. I express my ideas about the world as a healer would do.
We need to imitate Joseph Campbell’s famous book,
We also need to work with the spirit of a person—with their fantasies, their realities, and their sensibilities. Jodorowsky is a weekly contributor of "good news" to the nightly "author news report" of his friend, Fernando Sánchez-Dragó in Telemadrid. It's 100+ pages on what you need to know to make beautiful, inexpensive movies using a DSLR.
A poor guy needs crowdfunding. Pascal and I collaborated 50-50 on this film as a couple, based on our own experience. If we put 3 or 4 cameras and lights everywhere, it would disturb the people we filmed when they're in that state of vulnerability.
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We had to make the camera feel as invisible as possible. He is an outrageous human character. [Laughs] They would say, "You are a big business, why do you need our money? Over the course of the film, a number of people wrestling with inner-demons seek Jodorowsky’s help and the results are both bizarre and moving: A man with suicidal thoughts heads out to a desert to simulate the experience of being dead and buried; a woman with survivor’s guilt in the wake of her fiancé’s death goes skydiving; a man who wants to overcome a stutter paints himself gold and walks half-naked through the streets. "The people we included in the film were experiencing real suffering. Every Psychomagic act consisted of one shot, because it's not possible to "remake" a Psychomagic act.
"I am not against industry. I want to make people feel that live is worth living. I made this movie because it was the only way to include testimonies of the people who perform the Psychomagic acts. So, naturally, I came to movies.
But my initial goal was to heal psychological problems within myself. I have millions of people who follow me on Facebook and Twitter and I wrote to them saying, "If you have a problem, send me a letter. I could not rehearse any of the shots in the movie. Psychomagic introduces us to Alejandro Jodorowsky, a modern day shapeshifting trickster-wizard-healer. A person of industry cannot do crowdfunding, because the people who donate their money to a project don't believe in the morality of "industry."
Science is necessary… it’s just incomplete. When I made Every picture has a lot of problems before it can be realized: "We need to make money with the picture! That is what's healing: "I have value." Throughout my whole life, the producers I’ve worked with only gave me money because they admired me.
Alejandro Jodorowsky has spent his entire career as a searcher—searching for things he hasn’t yet tried or for things that never before existed. It comes from a passion to create something new.
I want to give something to the public." I want to give something to the public. Our motives as filmmakers were good because we both acted as a father and a mother for each person who performed the Psychomagic acts. But at the same time, the film is not a documentary. 'Endless Poetry:' Why Alejandro Jodorowsky Thinks You Should 'Make Movies to Lose Money'Alejandro Jodorowsky Thinks COVID-19 Can Change Cinema (for the Better)Jodorowsky Speaks: 10 Outrageous Quotes from the Avant-Garde Auteur's SXSW Talk So, I filmed them, but with a tiny camera—and I was very transparent with them about what we were doing. "I won't make movies like most people, I will act like a poet. An artist needs to be honest, and if you're honest you can get crowdfunded because you're not lying to your financial backers. The people we included in the film were experiencing real suffering. Festival International du Film Indépendant de Bordeaux I'm not someone focused on having a script and a lot of money for some big industrial thing.
There is not much difference between Alejandro's older movies and this one. Get your FREE copy of the eBook called "astonishingly detailed and useful" by Filmmaker Magazine! We shot for about 3 hours with each person. We need to have a star in the picture!