Now showing this week and next at CECUT, "The Dance of Reality" (2013) Alejandro Jodorowsky's first film in 23 years. Best known for his psychedelic 1970s cult movies "El Topo" and "The Magic Mountain," Jodorowsky's new film is alternately more carnivalesque and playful and more deeply personal than his earlier films.

Described as a "memory film" by one critic, the film is based on the imaginary autobiography of the same name "La danza de la realidad: psicomagia y psicochamanismo" published in Spanish in 2001. "Dance" was shot in the director's childhood hometown of Tocopilla, on Chile's northern coast, and across the desert landscape, Jodorowsky maps a coming-of-age story onto the political tensions of mid-20th-century Chile. Spinning out poetic visual images, myth and metaphor, Jodorowsky explores the era's virulent anti-Semitism, and the conflict between communism and fascism.

The story unfolds through the perceptions of sensitive, pre-teen Alejandro (played by Jeremias Herskovits), on the one hand drowning in the emotion of his mother (Pamela Flores), and on the other, brutally bullied by his father (played by Jodorowsky's real-life son Brontis) who is bent on making his son into a "real man."

"All things are connected in a web of suffering and pleasure," affirms the director: Jodorowsky appears onscreen at times as a companion of his youthful self who escapes from his family home to wander where he discovers maimed mine workers,dwarfs, and a punk rock, pierced and tattooed Theosophist who teaches him about meditation.

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The film is on view this week and next at the Cineteca at CECUT: Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, January 14, 16, 17, 18 at 6:00 PM and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, January 20, 21, 22 at 8:30 PM., with a running time of130 minutes. Admission $42 pesos/ General Admission. $26 pesos/ Teachers and students.

jill.holslin@sandiegored.com