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]
Born in 1956, Julio Martínez Pérez is a Spanish comic artist who
works under the pen name Das Pastoras. He published his first
professional work in a special 1983 issue of El Víbora and
co-founded the fanzine Zero, which published other renowned artists
of his generation. In 2007 he was hired to draw Castaka, a new
cycle of Alexandro Jodorowsky's Metabarons saga. In
addition to the French market, Das Pastoras has been working for US
comic books since the late 2000s.
Travis Charest was born in Leduc, a small town in the Canadian
province of Alberta. He discovered his first comic book at his
grandmother’s house, which inspired him to start drawing. He
submitted his work to DC Comics, and based on his early work for
them was asked by Jim Lee to come to California and join the
Wildstorm Studios, for whom he drew the Wild CATS revamp.
He eventually travelled to Paris to collaborate on a one-off
graphic novel taking place within the famed universe of The
Metabarons, created by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The project also
involved Before The Incal and The
Technopriests artist Zoran Janjetov and would come to be known
as Weapons of the Metabaron. By 2007, Charest had settled in
California and developed his own webcomic, Spacegirl, of which
a collected book version was self-published in 2008.
Zoran Janjetov is among the most prominent comics creators of
former Yugoslavia and has been published worldwide. He is best
known as the illustrator of "Before The Incal," also written by
Alexandro Jodorowsky.
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (French: [?i?o]; 8 May
1938 – 10 March 2012) was a French artist, cartoonist, and
writer who worked in the Franco-Belgian bandes
dessinées (BD) tradition. Giraud garnered worldwide acclaim
predominantly under
the pseudonym Mœbius (/'mo?bi?s/;[1] French: [møbjys])
for his fantasy/science-fiction work, and to a slightly lesser
extent as Gir (French: [?i?]), which he used
for the Blueberry series and his
other Western-themed work. Esteemed by Federico
Fellini, Stan Lee, and Hayao Miyazaki, among
others,[2] he has been described as the most
influential bande dessinée artist
after Hergé.[3]
His most famous body of work as Gir concerns
the Blueberry series, created with
writer Jean-Michel Charlier, featuring one of the
first antiheroes in Western comics, and which is
particularly valued in continental Europe. As Mœbius, he achieved
worldwide renown (in this case in the English-speaking nations and
Japan, as well – where his work as Gir had not done well), by
creating a wide range of science-fiction and fantasy comics in a
highly imaginative, surreal, almost abstract style. These
works include Arzach and the Airtight Garage of
Jerry Cornelius. He also collaborated with avant
garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky for
an unproduced adaptation of Dune and the comic-book
series The Incal.
Mœbius also contributed storyboards and concept designs to
numerous science-fiction and fantasy films,
such as Alien, Tron, The Fifth Element, and The
Abyss. Blueberry was adapted for the screen in
2004 by French director Jan Kounen
Ladrönn grew up drawing and inking in Mexico while idolizing
artists such as Mœbius. Ladronn has drawn for Marvel, DC, and
several independent publishing houses. He won an Eisner Award for
his work on Hip Flask back in 2006.
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