Film Details

We can think of no better kickoff to our Jodorowsky series than this recent documentary in which the Chilean-French auteur talks passionately about his work and the cinema. He does this as part of a look back at a movie that was never made—a grand, multi-million-dollar film version of Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi novel Dune that was to have been Jodo’s follow-up to El Topo and The Holy Mountain. With art direction by H.R. Giger and French comic book artist Moebius, special effects by Dan O'Bannon, music by Pink Floyd, and a cast consisting of Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger, and David Carradine, Dune was going to be a movie to remember. All it lacked was financing. The documentary shows and animates some of the hundreds of drawings and sketches from the project that still survive, to give a sense of what might have been. Equally animated is the ebullient Jodorowsky, then 85, as he walks us through his visionary almost-masterpiece that, even without being made, influenced Star Wars, Alien, and other sci-fi films that followed. DCP. 90 min.