Jodorowsky, Alejandro (1929–)

Cult filmmaker and author Alejandro Jodorowsky was born on February 7, 1929, in Iquique, Chile, to Russian immigrant parents. He attended university in Santiago but left Chile when he was twenty years old and did not return to his country of origin for forty years. In Paris in the 1950s he studied mime with Marcel Marceau and worked with members of the surrealist movement on film and theater projects and novels. After further work in avant-garde theater in Paris during the 1960s, he made his first feature film, Fando y Lis (Fando and Lis) in Mexico in 1967. In 1970 he wrote, directed, and starred in El topo (The Mole), which has been categorized as a "mystic western" that employs the surrealist techniques and theory he absorbed in France. With El topo he gained one of his biggest supporters, John Lennon of the Beatles, who along with his wife Yoko Ono financed Jodorowsky's third feature film, La montaña sagrada (The Holy Mountain, 1973). Santa Sangre (Holy Blood, 1989), a Mexican-Italian co-production directed by Jodorowsky, reestablished him as a cult figure in experimental and surrealist film. He is the author of several novels, including Donde mejor canta un pájaro (Where a Bird Sings Best, 1994), and collections of essays. Now a naturalized French citizen, he lives in Paris where he works with his cabaret místico (mystical cabaret).

See alsoCinema: From the Silent Film to 1990xml .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alejandro Jodorowsky. Official Web Site. Available from http://www.alejandro-jodorowsky.com.

García Gamboa, Rafael. "Jodorowsky: De lo pánico a la psicomagia." Archipiélago 6-7, no. 2 (March-August 1996): 44.

Jodorowsky, Alejandro. El Topo: The Book of the Film. Edited by Ross Firestone. Translated by Joanne Pottlitzer. New York: Douglas Book Corp., 1972.

Jodorowsky, Alejandro. La escalera de Los Ángeles: Reflexiones sobre el arte de pensar. Barcelona: Ediciones Obelisco, 2006.

                                           Stacy Lutsch