Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on July 2014

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ’70s cult milestones El Topo and The Holy Mountain were more than enough to ensure his place in the filmmaker pantheon. Now in his 80s and not having made a film in two decades, it was assumed he was retired. But he surprised everyone at Cannes last year with The Dance of Reality, a work that mixes autobiography and fantasy with the director’s son playing his own grandfather, a Russian–Jewish immigrant raising a family in 1930s Chile. Playing in Spanish from July 12 at Cinema Qualite (3-37-12 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku; http://qualite.musashino-k.jp) and Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (2-7-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku; www.ht-cinema.com)… Shibuya art house Cinema Vera (1-5 Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku ; www.cinemavera.com) presents yet another program of world cinema classics from July 12. The lineup includes Marilyn Monroe as an unhinged babysitter in Don’t Bother to Knock, Humphrey Bogart as a conman in Beat the Devil and Fred Astaire as a bandleader in Second Chorus… Eurospace in Shibuya (1-5 Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku; www.eurospace.co.jp) will run a Sergei Parajanov retrospective to mark the 90th anniversary of the Soviet filmmaker’s birth. Parajanov’s dismissal of government-sanctioned social realism and his controversial behavior often landed him in prison.