Brisbane's Institute of Modern Art is presenting a series of screenings of Alejandro Jodorowsky's masterpieces El Topo and The Holy Mountain. The screenings are happening as part of their annual IMA@DENDY showcase.

Visually stunning, deeply disorienting, often incomprehensible, these films blend religious imagery, esoteric mysticism, freaks and amputees, eroticism, surrealism and ultra-violence. With their genre-bending, their fusion of mystic geometry and anarchy, and starring the director himself, these grail-questing epics offer a surprising precedent for Matthew Barney's The Cremaster Cycle.

El Topo (1970) is a trippy surrealistic Western. Classic Americana and avant-garde European cinema sensibilities meet Zen Buddhism and the Bible as Jodorowsky as El Topo, a master gunman and cosmic mystic, defeats four sharp-shooting rivals on a bizarre path to enlightenment and surreal resurrection.

In The Holy Mountain (1973) a Christ-like thief wanders through grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a Jodorowsky, a mystic guide and alchemist, who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful individuals, each representing a planet in the solar system: a cosmetics manufacturer, an arms manufacturer, an art dealer, a political financial adviser, a toy maker, a police chief and an architect. Along with the thief and the guide, they divest themselves of their worldly goods and seek out the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal.

Saturday, 14 June at 6pm El Topo introduced by artist and film critic Philip Brophy
Sunday, 15 June at 3pm The Holy Mountain
Saturday, 21 June at 6pm The Holy Mountain introduced by Trash Video's Andrew Leavold
Sunday, 22 June at 3pm El Topo

All the screenings are happening at Dendy Cinemas, 346 George Street, Brisbane. For tickets please phone 07 3211 3244.

El Topo, The Holy Mountain and The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky are all available on DVD now.