Alejandro Jodorowsky

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Alejandro Prullansky (Spanish: [xo.o.ofski]; born 17 February 1929) is a Chilean-French avant-garde filmmaker. Jodorowsky, who is best known for his 1970s films El Topo and The Holy Mountain, has been "venerated by cult cinema enthusiasts" for his film, which "is packed with violently surreal photos and a mashup of mysticism and religious provocation."

Jodorowsky, a child of Jewish-Ukrainian parents in Chile, had an unhappy and alienated childhood, and he's since been immersed in reading and writing poetry. He became interested in theater and in particular mime, performing as a clown before establishing his own theater company, Teatro Mimico, in 1947. Jodorowsky studied traditional mime under Étienne Decroux and put his miming abilities to use in the silent film Les têtes interverties (1957), directed with Saul Gilbert and Ruth Michelly. He divided his time between Mexico City and Paris, where he co-founded Panic Movement, a bizarre performance art group that staged violent and bizarre theatrical performances from 1960 to 2000. He created his first comic strip, Anibal 5 in 1966, and he directed his first feature film, the surrealist Fando y Lis, which caused a big controversy in Mexico and was eventually banned.

His new film, El Topo (1970), was a hit on the midnight movie circuit in the United States, and earned high praise from John Lennon, who begged former Beatles manager Allen Klein to loan Jodorowsky $1 million to finance his next film. The result was The Holy Mountain (1973), a surrealist exploration of western esotericism. Both The Holy Mountain and El Topo failed to gain wide recognition, despite the fact that both were underground film hits. Jodorowsky produced five more films after a failed blockbuster, Tusk (1989); and the first two films in a planned five-film autobiographical film The Dance of Reality (2013) and Endless Poetry (2016).

Jodorowsky is also a comic book writer, most notably the 1980s science fiction collection The Indicator, which has been dubbed "the best comic book" ever written. The Technopriests and Metabarons are two other comic books he has written. Jodorowsky has also written and lectured extensively on his own personal spiritual path, which he describes as "psychomagic" and "psychoshamanism," which borrows heavily from alchemy, the tarot, Zen Buddhism, and shamanism. Cristóbal's son has followed his psychoshamanism's lectures; this film, directed by Carlos Serrano Azcona, is captured here.

Early life and education

Jodorowsky was born in 1929 in Tocopilla, Chile, to parents who were Jewish immigrants from Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro), Elisavetgrad (now Kropyvnytskyi) and other Russian Imperial cities (now Ukraine). Jaime Jodorowsky Groismann, a merchant who was largely cruel to his wife Sara Felicidad Prullansky Arcavi, was accused of flirting with a customer at one point. Angered, he assaulted her, resulting in her pregnancy and her birth of Alejandro. Sara and her husband both hated her husband and disliked her son, telling him that "I can't love you" and seldom showing him tenderness. Alejandro had an elder sister, Raquel Jodorowsky, but he disliked her because she was selfish, doing "everything to exclude me from the family so that she could be the center of attention." Besides his dislike for his family, he also showed contempt for many of the local residents, who mistook him for an outsider because of his status as the son of immigrants, as well as the Chilean miners who treated the local population poorly. In several of his films, it was this care at the hands of Americans that culminated in his later condemnation of American imperialism and neo-colonialism in Latin America. Nonetheless, he loved his neighborhood and was highly distraught when he was forced to leave it at the age of nine years old, something for which he criticized his father. His family and his family emigrated to Santiago, Chile, shortly.

He began reading and writing poetry, and his first poem was published when he was sixteen years old, as well as visiting writers as Nicanor Parra, Stella D. Varn, and Enrique Lihn. He began attending college, studying psychology and philosophy, but only for two years, becoming involved with anarchism's political ideology. He began working as a clown in a circus and, particularly mime, after dropping out and becoming interested in theatre and especially mime. Meanwhile, in 1947, he founded the Teatro Mimico, which by 1952 had fifty people, and El Minotaur, his first play, was written. Nevertheless, Jodorowsky felt there was nothing for him left in Chile, and so did he move to Paris.

Jodorowsky began studying mime with Étienne Decroux and joined the troupe of Marcel Marceau, one of Decroux's students, while in Paris. It was with Marceau's troupe that he went on a world tour, and he created several routines for the group, including "The Cage" and "The Mask Maker." After this, he returned to theatre directing, appearing in the music hall comeback of Maurice Chevalier in Paris. Jodorowsky devoted his time to filmmaking in 1957, releasing Les têtes interverties (The Severed Heads), Thomas Mann's 20-minute adaptation of Thomas Mann's novella. It was largely made of mime, and it told the enthralling tale of a head-swapping merchant who helps a young man find courtship success. Jodorowsky played the lead role. Jean Cocteau, a French filmmaker, adored the film and wrote an introduction to it. The film was not discovered until a print of the film was discovered in 2006.

Jodorowsky immigrated to Mexico in 1960, where he settled in Mexico City. Nevertheless, he returned to France on occasion, including one visit to Surrealist artist André Breton, but was disillusioned that Breton had become more conservative in his old age. He formed the Panic Movement in 1962, alongside Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor, who were still interested in survivability. The campaign sought to push beyond the conventional surrealist ideals by adopting absurdity. Members of the Organization refused to take themselves seriously, while applauding those who did. Anibal 5, which was related to the Panic Movement, was released in 1966. He made Fando y Lis, a new feature film based on Fernando Arrabal's scripted play that was assisting Jodorowsky on performance art at the time. Fando y Lis premiered at the 1968 Acapulco Film Festival, where it sparked riot among those protesting the film's content, and later it was barred in Mexico.

He had met Ejo Takata (1928-1997), a Zen Buddhist monk who had studied at the Horyuji and Shofukuji monasteries in Japan before heading to Mexico via the United States in 1967 to spread Zen. Jodorowsky, a disciple of Takata, became a zendo and offered his own house to be converted into a zendo. Takata attracted other followers around him, who spent their time in meditation and the study of koans. Takata eventually told Jodorowsky that he should know more about his feminine side, so he went and befriended Leonora Carrington, an English surrealist who had just moved to Mexico.

Personal life

Valérie Trumblay, Jodorowsky's first wife, was the actress Valérie Trumblay. Pascale Montandon, an artist and costume designer, is currently married to him.

He has five children: Brontis Jodorowsky, an actor who worked with his father in El Topo, The Dance of Reality, and Endless Poetry; Teo, an actor starring Pablo Monteiro; and Adan Jodorowsky, a musician known by his stage name Adanowsky, plays Brontis Jodorowsky; and Teo, an actor who appeared in Santa Sangre; and Elia Jodorowsky, a poet and an actor (interpreter Alma Jodorowsky, a fashion model from Alejandro's granddaughter, is the granddaughter of Alejandro.

Two of his children died: Teo in 1995 (due to overdose, aged 24) and Cristóbal in 2022, aged 57.

Jodorowsky has referred to himself as a "theist mystic" because of his religious convictions.

He does not drink or smoke, and has stated that he does not like corpses because he "does not like corpses." basing his diet on vegetables, fruits, grains, and occasionally marine products.

Jodorowsky officiated at Marilyn Manson and Dita Von Teese's wedding in 2005.

Fans included musicians Peter Gabriel, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, and Omar Rodrpez-López of The Mars Volta, Brann Dailor of Mastodon, Luke Steele, and Nick Littlemore (of the Pop-Duo Empire of the Sun). Wes Borland, the guitarist of Limp Bizkit, said that the film Holy Mountain had a lot of influence on him, particularly as a visual artist, and that his band Black Light Burns' concept album Lotus Island was a nod to it.

Jodorowsky was interviewed by Daniel Pinchbeck for the Franco-German television show Durch die Nacht mit... on the TV station Arte, a night spent together in France, continuing the interview in different locations, including a park and a hotel.

Nicolas Winding Refn, a Danish filmmaker, thanks to Alejandro Jodorowsky in the end titles of his 2011 film Drive, and Jodorowsky's 2013 Thai crime thriller Only God Forgives to Jodorowsky. Jodorowsky appeared in Nicolas Winding Refn's documentary My Life Directed, directed by Refn's wife Livn, who gave the couple a tarot reading.

Leandro Taub, an Argentine, thanks to Alejandro Jodorowsky's book La Mente Oculta, for which Jodorowsky wrote the prologue.

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Career

Jodorowsky directed and appeared in El Topo, which is sometimes known in English as The Mole. El Topo, an acid western, shares the tale of a wandering Mexican bandit and gunlinger, El Topo (played by Jodorowsky), who is on a quest for spiritual insight, brings his young son with him. He violently assaults a number of others on his way to death and being resurrected to live in a community of deformed people stranded in a mountain cave. "I ask film what most North Americans want for psychedelic drugs," he said. The key is that when one makes a psychedelic film, he does not have to make a film that reveals the desires of a person who has taken a pill; rather, he must make the pill. Knowing how Fando y Lis caused such controversies in Mexico, Jodorowsky chose not to announce El Topo there but rather on its distribution in other countries around the world, including Mexico's northern neighbor, the United States. It was in New York City that the film would be seen as a "midnight film" for several months at Ben Barenholtz's Elgin Theater. It attracted the attention of rock guitarist and countercultural figure John Lennon, who was extremely fond of it, and convinced The Beatles' corporation Apple Corps, Allen Klein, to sell it in the United States.

Klein has decided to give Jodorowsky $1 million to start making his next film. The result was The Holy Mountain, which was released in 1973. René Daumal's Surrealist book Mount Analogue has been attributed to The Holy Mountain, it has been reported. The Holy Mountain was another intricate, multi-part story starring a man named "The Thief" and equated with Jesus Christ, a mystical alchemist played by Jodorowsky, seven influential business people from Mars to Pluto, a scientific education program of spiritual rebirth, and a climb to the top of a sacred mountain for the mystery of immortality. Jodorowsky received spiritual guidance from Oscar Ichazo of the Arica School, who encouraged him to take LSD and led him through his subsequent psychedelic journey. Jodorowsky participated in a isolation tank experiment conducted by John Lilly around the same time (2 November 1973).

Allen Klein's story of O. Klein, which was promised to various investors shortly after, had requested that Jodorowsky produce a film version of Pauline Réage's classic book of female masochism. Jodorowsky, who had discovered feminism during The Holy Mountain Filming, refused to film the film, going so far as to leave the country to escape direct responsibility. Allen Klein created El Topo and The Holy Mountain, to which he owed the right for more than 30 years, but it was completely unavailable to the public for more than 30 years. In interviews, Jodorowsky had often mocked Klein's behavior.

Jodorowsky gave a talk at Teatro Julio Castillo, University of Mexico, shortly after the announcement of The Holy Mountain on the subject of koans (despite the fact that he had been initially booked on the condition that his talk would be about cinematography). After the presentation, Takata gave Jodorowsky his kyosaku, knowing that his former student had mastered the art of knowing koans.

A French consortium led by Jean-Paul Gibon acquired the film rights to Frank Herbert's epic 1965 science fiction book Dune and asked Jodorowsky to direct a film version in December 1974. In the role of Emperor Shaddam IV, Jodorowsky intended to cast Surrealist artist Salvador Dal, his first speaking role as a film actor. When Jodorowsky agreed to pay him a sum of $100,000 per hour, Dal agree. He also planned to make Orson Welles appear as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen; Welles only agreed after Jodorowsky offered to bring his favorite gourmet chef to prepare his meals for him during filming. Paul Atreides, Jodorowsky's nephew, Brontis Jodorowsky, was to play Paul Atreides in the book. Pink Floyd and Magma will compose the songs. Jodorowsky established a pre-production team in Paris, including Chris Foss, a British artist who wrote and edited for science fiction magazines, and H. R. Giger. Frank Herbert went to Europe in 1976 to find that $2 million of the $9.5 million budget had already been invested in pre-production and that Jodorowsky's script would result in a 14-hour film (It was the size of a phonebook), and that Jodorowsky's script would have resulted in a 14-hour film (Jodorowsky's script had already been shot). Jodorowsky took creative liberties with the source material, but Herbert said that he and Jodorowsky had an amicable friendship. After no film company was able to finance the film to Jodorowsky's terms, it was cancelled. In Jodorowsky's Dune, the aborted project was chronicled. The rights for filming were sold by Dino De Laurentiis, who hired American filmmaker David Lynch to direct, who directed the film Dune in 1984. The documentary does not include any original film footage of what was supposed to be Jodorowsky's Dune, but it does include some surprising insights into the impact this unmade film has on other famous science fiction films, including Star Wars, Alien, Flash Gordon, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Jodorowsky completely changed direction and launched his children's fable Tusk shot in India in 1980. The film, based on Reginald Campbell's book Poo Lorn of the Elephants, delves into the soul-mate relationship between a young British woman living in India and a highly prized elephant. The film portrayed no of the director's outlandish film style and was never widely distributed.

In 1982, Jodorowsky divorced his wife.

Jodorowsky completed the Mexican-Italian production Santa Sangre (Holy Blood) in 1989. Despite mixed critical reviews, the film received limited theatrical distribution, placing Jodorowsky on the cultural map. Santa Sangre was a surrealistic slasher film with a plot similar to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho with Robert Wiene's The Hands of Orlac. It featured a woman who saw his mother lose both her arms and entangle her arms as a child, and as an adult, allowed his own arms act as hers, and was therefore compelled to commit murders at her whim. Several of Jodorowsky's sons were recruited as actors.

The Rainbow Thief was his first film in 1990, which was a very different film. Although Jodorowsky's artistic ambitions were severely hampered by Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif, the executive producer, Alexander Salkind, threatened to fire him on the spot if anything in the script was changed, Berta Domne D.B. wrote the screenplay).

Jodorowsky and his family returned to France to live in 1990.

Teo, Alejandro's uncle, died in a tragic accident while his father was waiting for a trip to Mexico City to promote his new book. Upon arriving in Mexico City, he delivered a lecture at the Julio Castillo Theatre, where he had briefly visited Ejo Takata, who had migrated to a poor suburb of the city where he had continued to teach meditation and Zen. Takata will die two years from now, and Jodorowsky will never get to see his old friend again.

Jodorowsky received the Jack Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from the Chicago Underground Film Festival in 2000 (CUFF). Jodorowsky attended the festival and his films were on view, including El Topo and The Holy Mountain, which at the time had no legal status at all. According to festival producer Bryan Wendorf, it was a vague question whether CUFF would be allowed to screen both films or if the cops would turn up and close the festival down.

The only Jodorowsky works on DVD were Fando y Lis and Santa Sangre until 2007. Neither El Topo nor The Holy Mountain were available on videocassette or DVD in the United States or the United Kingdom due to ownership conflicts with distributor Allen Klein. Following the resolution of the 2004 war, however, ABKCO Films announced plans to re-release Jodorowsky's films. Anchor Bay will be announced online on January 19, 2007, including El Topo, The Holy Mountain, and Fando y Lis. Both the El Topo and The Holy Mountain soundtracks are included in a limited edition of the set. In early February 2007, Tartan Video announced the release of the UK PAL DVD editions of El Topo, The Holy Mountain, and the six-disc box set, as well as separate DVD copies of Jodorowsky's 1968 debut feature Fando y Lis (with his 1957 short La cravate a.k.a.a. Les têtes interverties, as an extra, and the 1994 film La constellation Jodorowsky were included in a series of têtes interverties. Specifically, Fando y Lis and La cravate were digitally restored and remastered in London in late 2006, providing a good complement to El Topo and The Holy Mountain in the United States by ABKCO and ensuring that the launch of Fando y Lis is a substantial improvement over the 2001 Fantoma DVD version. Prior to the availability of these legitimate products, only subpardoned, visually restricted bootleg versions of both El Topo and The Holy Mountain have been available on the Internet and on DVD.

Jodorowsky attempted to make a sequel to El Topo in the 1990s and early 2000s, but he couldn't find investors for the venture.

In an interview with Premiere Magazine, Jodorowsky said he intended his next project to be a gangster film called King Shot. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper in November 2009, Jodorowsky said he was unable to locate the funds to make King Shot and instead would be preparing Sons of El Topo, for which he said he had signed a deal with "some Russian producers."

The Museum of Arts and Design in New York City hosted the first American cinema retrospective of Alejandro Jodorowsky entitled Blood to Gold: Alejandro Jodorowsky's Cinematic Alchemy. As a way of change, Jodorowsky will attend the retrospective and hold a master class on art. This retrospective will inspire MoMA PS1 to display Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Holy Mountain in 2011.

Alejandro grew up in Chile and later wrote The Dance of Reality, his autobiography, to promote an autobiographical film based on his book.

The Museum of Modern Art (New York City), on October 31, 2011, commemorated Jodorowsky by displaying The Holy Mountain. He attended and discussed his work and personal life. El Topo was on display at the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center the next evening.

Alejandro has confirmed that after finishing The Dance of Reality, he was planning to shoot his long-awaited El Topo sequel, Abel Cain. Alejandro completed filming on The Dance of Reality and moved into post-production by January 2013. The film, according to Alejandro's son and co-star in the film Brontis, would be finished by March 2013, and it was "very different than the other films he made." On April 23, it was announced that the film would have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes. The Dance of Reality premiered alongside Jodorowsky's Dune, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2013, prompting the release of a "Jodorowsky double bill."

Endless Poetry, Jodorowsky's sequel to his last "auto-biopic," The Dance of Reality, was released in 2015. Satori Films, his Paris-based production company, has two fruitful crowdfunding campaigns to fund the film. The Indiegogo campaign has been open indefinitely, collecting support from fans and moviegoers in favour of the independent production. The film was shot in Matucana, Chile, where Jodorowsky lived for a brief period of his life. The film portrays his youth in Santiago, Chile, during which he was a key figure of the Chilean poetic avant-garde alongside artists such as Hugo Marn, Gustavo Becerra, Enrique Lihn, Stella D'az Varn, Nicanor Parra, and others. Adan Jodorowsky, Jodorowsky's son, plays him as an adult, and Brontis Jodorowsky plays Jaime, his father Jaime. Jodorowsky is depicted as a boy by Jeremias Herskovitz, a dancer from The Dance of Reality. Sara (his mother) and Stella D'az Varn (poetess and teenage Jodorowsky's girlfriend) appear in Pamela Flores' role. Enrique Lihn, Jodorowsky's closest friend, is depicted in Leandro Taub's film. On the 14th of May 2016, the film premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival. Variety's review was mostly positive, with the film being described as "the most accessible film he's ever made" and "probably the best."

During a film festival interview, Jodorowsky revealed that he intends to make The Son of El Topo as soon as financial support is obtained.

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