The Jodorowsky Library: Book Two

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky (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.”

Born to Jewish-Ukrainian parents in Chile, Jodorowsky experienced an unhappy and alienated childhood, immersing himself in reading and writing poetry. Dropping out of college, he became involved in theater and 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 used his miming skills in the silent film Les têtes interverties (1957). From 1960 onwards, he divided his time between Mexico City and Paris, co-founding the Panic Movement, a surrealist performance art collective. In 1966, he created his first comic strip, Anibal 5, and in 1967, directed his first feature film, the surrealist Fando y Lis, which caused a scandal in Mexico and was eventually 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. John Lennon convinced Allen Klein to finance Jodorowsky’s next film, the surrealist The Holy Mountain (1973), an exploration of western esotericism. Disagreements with Klein led to both films failing to gain widespread distribution, though they became underground classics. After a cancelled attempt at filming Frank Herbert’s Dune, Jodorowsky produced five more films: Tusk (1980), Santa Sangre (1989), The Rainbow Thief (1990), and the autobiographical films 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, described as potentially “the best comic book” ever written. Other comics include The Technopriests and Metabarons. Jodorowsky has also written and lectured about his spiritual system, “psychomagic” and “psychoshamanism,” which borrows from alchemy, tarot, Zen Buddhism, and shamanism. His son Cristóbal has followed these teachings, documented in the feature film Quantum Men.

Georges Bess is a French artist, best known for his collaboration with Alejandro Jodorowsky. He moved to Sweden in the early 1970s, where he began his artistic career under his own name or pseudonyms. He cooperated with the Swedish “Mad” magazine and drew stories for “The Phantom” from 1977 to 1987. In the early 1980s, Bess traveled to Tibet, an experience that deeply impressed him. Shortly thereafter, he met Jodorowsky, beginning a long and successful collaboration.

Born in 1971, Olivier Boiscommun studied Graphic Arts in Paris. Initially a fashion designer, he switched to studying Fine Arts in Angoulême in 1993. He created a story for the Enfants du Nil anthology in 1994 and a small black and white album. He worked on the animated film Bamboo Bears before joining Delcourt publishers, where he began the Troll series with Joann Sfar and Jean-David Morvan. In 2001, he produced Anges with writer Dieter, and created The Book of Jack and The Book of Sam with writer Denis-Pierre Filippi.

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