The Holy Mountain

We’re kicking off our Cult Film Series with the 4k restoration of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s masterpiece, “The Holy Mountain.”

Fifty years ago, The Holy Mountain premiered as the scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. Writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s flood of sacrilegious imagery and existential symbolism is a surreal sojourn for enlightenment pitting illusion against truth.

The Alchemist (Jodorowsky) assembles together an elite group of thieves – ‘industrialists and politicians’ – that represent the planets in the solar system. The master’s adept intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.

Following his meteoric rise in the wake of El Topo, Alejandro was given a budget of $1 million dollars (equivalent to $4 million today) and total artistic freedom for his follow up project. He wrote the screenplay, designed the sets and costumes, co-wrote the music, directed and acted in the film. He rejected using known or professional actors, and instead employed persons with actual backgrounds that matched their characters for many key roles.

The Holy Mountain is a mythical, mystical, magical masterpiece, a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life – part spiritual quest, part science fiction, part social satire, and completely without comparison.

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The Board of Directors for the Center for Contemporary Arts of Santa Fe (CCA) has voted to close the organization after serving the Santa Fe and northern New Mexico community on its forty-fourth year of operation. The decision was reached after careful consideration of options presented during its current strategic planning initiative.

“Closing a cherished, community organization like CCA is one of the most difficult decisions a board can make,” said David Muck, CCA Board Chair. “However, we simply couldn’t secure the level of individual donations required to achieve the high quality of programming and exhibitions envisioned by CCA’s professional staff and board of directors,” he continued.

Many nonprofits in the U.S. were hit hard by Covid and CCA is a good example. The CCA Cinema closed during Covid, and attendance was slow to resume, reflecting national downward trends in moviegoing post-Covid as reported in multiple news outlets, such as IndieWire and others. In 2023, the organization forecast the cinema to perform at only 50% of pre-Covid levels, resulting in monthly losses. Though grants and individual donations to the organization were up significantly in 2022 and 2023, they simply weren’t enough to make up the difference in the annual budget and cover both current and planned exhibitions and operations.

“This tough decision did not come lightly,” said Danyelle Means, CCA Executive Director and Head Curator. “For a nonprofit institution that operates independently of state support, the annual donations needed to sustainably continue operating was not enough, especially in the wake of challenges from pandemic closures and reduced attendance,” Means continued.

CCA did have its share of recent successes: CCA Executive Director Danyelle Means had secured a three-year grant of $100,000 per year from the Ford Foundation, with an option to renew for another three-year period. The organization was also the recipient of a $50,000 inaugural grant from Ruth Arts Foundation, as well as other granting organizations. Self-Determined, a 2022 CCA exhibition, was listed as one of the world’s Top 50 Exhibitions of 2022 by Hyperallergic magazine and CCA’s new monthly Closer Looks cinema series was a hit with film enthusiasts.

The CCA board of directors considered closing the organization in December of 2021, but voted to remain open in 2022 in hopes of a recovery post-Covid. However, despite the hard work of CCA staff and the accomplishments like the ones mentioned above, the shuttered period during which the cinema was closed proved too challenging to overcome. CCA Cinema’s final day of public operations is Thursday, April 6, and all upcoming CCA gallery exhibitions and public programs are cancelled.