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 November 26th, 1943 in Mendoza, Argentina.
Gimenez finished his high school education as an industrial design major and advanced his artistic education by attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain, where he studied drawing. For the next few years, he dedicated himself to the drawing of comic books, both back in his native Argentina with such publishers as Colomba and Record, as well as in Spain, contributing to magazines such as Zona 84, and Comix International. By this point, Gimenez had made quite a name for himself for his extremely detailed renditions of machinery, chiefly in the war and science fiction genres. His art further propelled him to international collaborations, and it was in 1979 that he was first published in France with a series of titles including “Leo Roa," which he also wrote. The following year, he participated, as a creative designer, on a segment of the film “Heavy Metal." For the next decade, he continued his work in comic book magazines, notably the French comics anthology Metal Hurlant and the Italian L'Eternauta.
The 1990s saw him strengthening his fan base as he was repetitively voted best artist by European audiences, a recognition that was mirrored in the festival and critical realms, with such awards as the Gaudi award at the Feria Internacional del Comics de Barcelone, in 1990. In 1992, he meets Alejandro Jodorowsky for the first time, and the two began work on “The Metabarons," a sci-fi saga of epic proportions in both art and story. It is to this day regarded as one of the true graphic novel classic of the genre and it continues successful sales around the world.
Gimenez currently maintains a consistent yet varied workload, lending his talents as illustrator to covers for CD albums and novels, as well as serving as a concept artist on video games, and motion pictures. He also remains in high demand as a graphic novel artist, collaborating with some of Europe's most acclaimed authors such as Carlos Trillo, Emilio Balcarce, and Roberto Dal Prà, when he is not writing his own stories as he successfully continues to do, as with “The Fourth Power" collection.
On April 2nd, 2020, he passed away in his home province of Mendoza, Argentina, from COVID-19 complications.
Web sites:+
http://www.juangimenez.com/
