Father Geek here. This film was given to me a few days ago by a film professional who is working with Underground film maker Kenneth Anger on a new project. I brought it to Geek Headquarters and my senses were treated to a movie that I can only describe as brilliant, pure performance art. I immediately called up LOBO, our Latin-AICN reporter here in Austin. I had to view it again with someone who had a better command of Spanish than my mere San Antonio up bringing had given me. Oh, there were subtitles, but the visuals were so phantastic, so wonderful that I dared not attempt to read them for fear of missing the images that this masterwork is all about. I had Sister Satan come to bare witness too. Our family's aspiring young artist who had spent her middle and high school years in the "goth" subculture would provide needed insights for sure.
Have you seen the BEYOND, you know at the end when the couple finds themselves in the world of a surrealist painting, well that's this whole film. It is steeped in the symbolism of Bunuel and Fellini. I found myself feeling as though I was watching a living painting by Dali, only black and white. Just how unique is it? How intense? How powerful? Well when it premiered in Acapulco in 1968 the audience was whipped to such a frenzy of both love and hate for the project that a riot broke out among the festival attendees and the Director Jodorowsky was stoned. A Mexican swat team had to help him and his film out of town. The film was seldom shown after that. This is the debut film by a master of surreal film. The man handpicked by both Frank Herbert and William Burroughs to film their greatest works. Sadly the suits killed both projects. Well, here's what LOBO thought...
Ola, LOBO here with a look at a very very strange motion picture from our past that has just surfaced again after 3 decades in someone's vault...
Ola, LOBO here with a look at a very very strange motion picture from our past that has just surfaced again after 3 decades in someone's vault...
This is a review of "FANDO Y LIS" made in Mexico in 1967 and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky from Chile, who also made the movies EL TOPO, HOLY MOUNTAIN, SANTA SANGRE and TUSK. This film was lost for over 30 years and just now has been released by fantoma and zoetrope. This film was based on a one page script letting the rest relie on the creativity and imagination of Jodorowsky.
The movie is about two people in particular, one named FANDO (the guy) and LIS(the girl) who are looking for a city called TAR, that like it seems in the movie was mentioned to FANDO when he was a little boy, during their journey to the city of TAR they get into different situations. The first one is an abandoned or bombed lot where there is people dancing without following any music and somehow celebrating what happened to that place or remembering what used to be, in the center of the ruins there is a guy playing a piano on fire and people having fun. LIS without a chance to join them because she is paralyzed, she just watches them making fun of her ,from her cart, where FANDO has his drum.
Later the movie jumps to FANDO playing in a junkyard where he is the toy of women that get pleasure and fun by sexually teasing him. They leave that place and continue their journey looking for that city. Another episode on their adventure takes them and maybe you, if you like their world, to a path without an exit and makes them doubt that TAR even exists, FANDO tired of pushing the cart with LIS,the gramophone and drum, becomes desperate and doesn't want to go on, but up on a hill there is some kind of monk mixed with a bum and crazy ( or from another planet/country/city or whatever) calls them and points them a way out. FANDO and LIS follow that road now believing that it will take them to TAR.
And so they keep traveling and finding more towns where they meet new roads and "people". They even sing along a melody that goes like this....."QUE BONITO ES UN ENTIERRO...." and FANDO goes like "I WILL TAKE YOU A FLOWER AND A DOG.....". The whole movie is black and white, but you might see some color in it, it's all on how you see and feel this movie.
The city of TAR is in the movie ( I think) some kind of heaven or happy place, where they think will find the things they lack in either their childhood or life itself. All of the movie is weird (or not), leaving you to be the one to decide what was who, and who was what. This film might seem different every time, if you watch it more than once and see it from another angle. For me you are the who and the what in the game, you choose and follow , or you play and they have fun with you, it's all up to you.
There is innocence( or not), love (or not), violence(or not), sex (or not), comedy (or not), action (or not) everything (or nothing). I find this film kind of a blend between WIZARD OF OZ, SIX STRING SAMURAI and the sketches of LUIS BUÑUEL somehow captured away from his trash can. I liked it a lot and I say it one more time, you can be the who or the what.....
