HELICOPTER

+ JoDOROWSKY’S PSYCHOMAGIC

A feature film version of Ari’s groundbreaking 22-minute film “Helicopter” (below) is in progress. The new film won the Grand Jury Prize for Works in Progress at FEST New Directors New Films.

The original short “Helicopter,” about the crash which killed Ari’s mother along with with rock music promoter Bill Graham, was called one of the best short films ever made by several publications. It influenced a generation of filmmakers, is taught in film schools around the world, and won the Student Oscar and other prizes worldwide, playing Sundance, SXSW, and 100+ festivals.

Years after Ari made the short, visionary director Alejandro Jodorowsky gave Ari a personal psychomagic assignment to go deeper, and expand it into a feature-length movie.

The new “Helicopter” asks the question: can we heal the past by re-writing it? As Ari attempts to perform Jodorowsky’s increasingly perilous spiritual challenge, he faces shattering revelations about trauma, fatherhood, motherhood, shamanism and death itself. 

Below, you may watch the original short film “Helicopter,” as well as a short “letter to Jodorowsky” from the making of the film.

ABOUT THE ORIGINAL SHORT FILM:

"Writer-director Ari Gold's HELICOPTER recounts in impressionistic detail the aftermath of his mother's death in the helicopter crash that also killed her boyfriend, rock promoter Bill Graham. The film has been making an uncommon stir at festivals everywhere, and with good reason--it's an effulgent burst of heartbreak. Employing a narrative pastiche that includes acted vignettes, a black-and-white animated re-creation of the crash itself, poignant answering-machine voice-over and personal photos, Gold deftly conveys the fractured nature of loss: how memory, despair, indignation and even elation surge and recede in the mourning mind."
- LA Weekly Pick of the Week

"Hypnotic, beautiful, totally brave. The year's best short film."
- Film Threat 

GOLD MEDAL WINNER — Student Academy Awards
GRAND PRIX — Aix-en-Provence Short Film Festival
BEST INTERNATIONAL SHORT — Belo Horizonte
BEST SHORT FILM — South-by-Southwest Film Fest
BEST SHORT (EXPERIMENTAL) — USA Film Festival
BEST FILM, BEST DIRECTOR & NEW YORK MAGAZINE AUDIENCE AWARD — First Run Film Festival
2nd PRIZE — "Best Of" Festival (a competition between 65 worldwide Grand Prize winners)
BEST SHORT — Woodstock Film Festival
JURY AWARD — Reykjavik Short Film Festival
SPECIAL JURY AWARD — New Orleans Film Festival
SPECIAL JURY AWARD — Moab Film Festival
BEST SHORT — Valley Film Festival
& many other prizes