According to Variety, "Now, well into his 80s, Jodorowsky has managed to reinvent himself in the most spectacular and unlikely way. Endless Poetry, the second in Jodorowsky’s proposed cycle of cinematic memoirs (the first being 2013’s The Dance of Reality, screened to full house at BIEFF 2014), is a work of transporting charm and feeling. It’s the most accessible movie the director has ever made, and it may also be the best."
After the International Premiere at Cannes Film Festival’s Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Bucharest hosts the Romanian Premiere of Endless Poetry, which will be presented within the BIEFF 2017 Opening Gala, on Tuesday 28th March at Cinema Muzeul Țăranului. The screening is supported by the French Institute in Bucharest, the distributor Le Pacte and the TIFF Cinematheque. There will be a second screening on Friday 31st March at 5:30pm, at Cinema Elvire Popesco.
According to Cineuropa, "Cult filmmaker and psychomagic ‘guru’ Alejandro Jodorowsky lives up to his reputation with Endless Poetry, a film that crosses over the border from surrealism to action without ever deviating from his central thread, and speaks to people who are new to symbolism just as well as it does to the crowd that is well-versed in the structures and strange characters it produces.”
A journey of initiation filled with eroticism and magic, Endless Poetry portrays an Alejandro Jodorowsky in his young adulthood, set in the 1940s and 50s, in the electric capital city of Santiago. There, he decides to become a poet and is introduced, by destiny, into the foremost bohemian and artistic circle of the time. He meets Enrique Lihn, Stella Diaz Varín, Nicanor Parra and many others of the country’s young, promising and unknown artists who would later become the titans of Latin America's literature. Endless Poetry is a tale of poetic experimentation; the story of a unique youth that lived as not many before them had dared: sensually, authentically, freely, madly.
BIEFF 2017 continues its successful collaboration with MUBI. Starting with 23rd March, BIEFF invites you to a warm-up viewing of a series of films created by seminal auteurs from the history of experimental cinema, which will be streamed on MUBI for a month. MUBI is a curated online VOD platform for cult, classic, independent and award-winning films from around the world. The filmmakers and artists proposed by BIEFF this year include Jonas Mekas, Maya Deren, Michael Snow, William Klein and Isidore Isou. Details about the programme are available here.
Created under the token of the ancient Mayan greeting IN LAK’ECH ALA K’IN – which translates into English as YOU ARE ANOTHER ME – this year's edition invites the audience to an exercise in empathy, challenging our ability to put ourselves in the shoes of our fellow man. We feel this is a burning necessity particularly in the present moment, in the light of the recent social conflicts and humanitarian crisis. BIEFF 2017's selection proposes a denial of borders – those between individuals, but also those of the cinematic language. The viewers are invited thus to internalize the tragedy of their fellow men and to see the world through the Other's eyes. The poster of BIEFF 2017 is designed by Carmen Gociu.
