Alejandro jodorowsky
© Pascale Montandon
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, musician, comics writer, and spiritual guru, best known for his avant-garde films including Fando and Lis (1968), El Topo(1970)—which became a cult hit and inaugurated the “midnight movie” phenomenon—The Holy Mountain (1973), and Santa Sangre (1989). As is documented in the recent film Jodorowsky’s Dune, in 1975 he began to work a colossal adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune—which was to star Orson Welles and Salvador Dalí and to be scored by Pink Floyd—but was never made (a later version was filmed by David Lynch). Recently, after 23 years away from the screen, Jodorowsky released his autobiographical film The Dance of Reality, about growing up in a Chilean mining town. Jodorowsky himself, his wife Valerie, and his sons Brontis, Axel, and Adan have all appeared in his films.
A circus clown and a puppeteer in his youth, Alejandro Jodorowsky left for Paris at the age of 23 to study mime with Marcel Marceau. He also befriended the surrealists Roland Topor and Fernando Arrabal, and in 1962 these three created the "Panic Movement" in homage to the mythical god Pan. He became a specialist in the art of the Tarot and prolific author of novels, poetry, short stories, essays, works on the Tarot and “psychomagic” healing, and over thirty successful comic books, working with such highly regarded comic book artists as Moebius and Bess. Restless Books will publish the first English translations of three of his best known books: Donde mejor canta un pájaro (Where the Bird Sings Best), El niño del jueves negro (The Son of Black Thursday), and Albina y los hombres perro (Albina and the Dog Men).
books
by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Translated from the Spanish by Alfred MacAdam
“No one alive today, anywhere, has been able to demonstrate the sheer possibilities of artistic invention—and in so many disciplines—as powerfully as Alejandro Jodorowsky.… His new semi-autobiographical novel Where the Bird Sings Best is his magnum opus, a fantastical something that in many ways mirrors the author himself: It is brilliant, mad, unpredictable.”
—NPR, Best Books of 2015
"One of the most inspiring artists of our time.... A prophet of creativity."
—Kanye West
Paperback • ISBN: 9781632060952
Hardcover • ISBN: 9781632060280
Publication date: Mar 31, 2015