Alejandro Jodorowsky
Prullansky (Spanish: [xoðo'?ofski]; born 17 February
1929) is a Chilean and French avant-garde filmmaker. Best
known for his films El Topo (1970), The Holy
Mountain (1973) and Santa Sangre (1989), Jodorowsky
has been "venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts" for his
work which "is filled with violently surreal images and a
hybrid blend of mysticism and religious
provocation".[1]
Born to Jewish-Ukrainian parents in Chile, Jodorowsky
experienced an unhappy and alienated childhood, and so immersed
himself in reading and writing poetry. Dropping out of college, he
became involved in theater and in particular mime, working as
a clown before founding his own theater troupe, the Teatro
Mimico, in 1947. Moving to Paris in the early 1950s, Jodorowsky
studied traditional mime under Étienne Decroux, and put his
miming skills to use in the silent film Les têtes
interverties (1957), directed with Saul Gilbert and Ruth
Michelly. From 1960 onwards he divided his time between Mexico City
and Paris, where he co-founded Panic Movement, a
surrealist performance art collective that staged violent
and shocking theatrical events. In 1966 he created his first comic
strip, Anibal 5, and in 1967 he directed his first feature
film, the surrealist Fando y Lis, which caused a huge scandal
in Mexico, eventually being banned.
His next film, the acid western El Topo (1970),
became a hit on the midnight movie circuit in the United
States, considered the first-ever midnight cult film, and garnered
high praise from John Lennon, who convinced
former Beatles manager Allen Klein to provide
Jodorowsky with $1 million to finance his next film. The
result was The Holy Mountain (1973), a surrealist
exploration of western esotericism. Disagreements with Klein,
however, led to both The Holy Mountain and El
Topo failing to gain widespread distribution, although both
became classics on the underground film
circuit.[1] After a cancelled attempt at
filming Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune,
Jodorowsky produced five more films: the family
film Tusk (1980); the surrealist horror Santa
Sangre (1989); the failed blockbuster The Rainbow
Thief (1990); and the first two films in a planned five-film
autobiographical series The Dance of Reality (2013)
and Endless Poetry (2016).
Jodorowsky is also a comic book writer, most notably penning
the science fiction series The Incal throughout the
1980s, which has been described as having a claim to be "the best
comic book" ever written.[2] Other comic books he has written
include The Technopriests and Metabarons. Jodorowsky
has also extensively written and lectured about his own spiritual
system, which he calls "psychomagic" and "psychoshamanism", which
borrows from alchemy, the tarot, Zen
Buddhism and shamanism.[3] His son Cristóbal has
followed his teachings on psychoshamanism; this work is captured in
the feature documentary Quantum Men, directed by Carlos
Serrano Azcona.[4]
Jean "Mœbius" Giraud was a French artist, cartoonist and writer who
worked in the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées tradition. Giraud
garnered worldwide acclaim predominantly under the pseudonym Mœbius
and to a lesser extent under the name Gir, which he used for
the Blueberry series and his paintings. Mœbius' most famous work
was The Incal, written by Alejandro Jodorowsky. He also
contributed storyboards and concept designs to numerous science
fiction and fantasy films, such as Alien, Tron, The Fifth Element
and The Abyss.
"It’s one of the great comics team-ups."
*Rolling Stone*
"The Incal is entrancing...It crackles with invention: if you like
your sci-fi, you’ll love this."
*The Guardian*
"If there is one phrase you could assign to The Incal as
a summary of it’s brilliance “like nothing else” is the most pure
and accurate description I could think of."
*Nothing But Comics*
"The Incal isn’t a book you just read. It’s a science fiction
book you experience. A true classic in every sense of the world.
It’s ingenious."
*Forces of Geek*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
