The child of Russian emigrants exiled to Chile, Alejandro Jodorowsky was born on February 7, 1929 in Irique. He left Chile for France in 1953 and joined the company of the celebrated mime Marcel Marceau. Thereafter, he staged performances by Maurice Chevalier and, in 1962, along with Roland Topor and Fernando Arrabal, he created Panique, (Panic), a cheeky, funny take on the surrealist movement.
Jodorowsky moved to Mexico in 1965 where he revolutionized the artistic scene, creating avant-garde theatre in particular. There, he directed three films, Fando Y Lis (1968), El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). As a result, Jodorowsky became known in the United States and the rest of the world as a celebrated cult filmmaker.
In 1973, he returned to France and embarked on the film adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune. Though the film wasn’t made, it had a marked influence on science fiction cinema for the years that followed, including Star Wars and Alien which employed key elements of the team that Jodorowsky had assembled as well as.
Jodorowsky next collaborated with celebrated artist/illustrator Moebius (Jean Henri Gaston Giraud) on a series of graphic novels, the first of which was Les Yeux du Chat, (The Eyes of The Cat) released in 1978. Two years later they launched into Les Aventures de John Difool (The Adventures of John Difool). Jodorowsky would soon become one of the most famous and prolific comic writers with his Alef-Thau series, in collaboration with Arno, as well as Anibal 5 and Juan Solo, with Georges Bess. He also created Incal series with Zoran Janjetov and Face de lune (Moon )Face with Boucq and La Caste Meta-Barons (The Saga of the Meta-Barons) with Juan Gimenez, to name but a few.
Jodorowsky returned to cinema in 1989 with Santa Sangre, followed in 1992 by The Rainbow Thief, with Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif. His autobiographical film La Danza de la Realidad, (The Dance of Reality) premiered at the Cannes Festival in 2013. Likewise, its sequel Poesia Sin Fin (Endless Poetry) premiered at Cannes in 2016.
A multidisciplinary artist, Jodorowsky is the author of plays, novels, essays and poetry collections. He is also known for his practice of “divinity tarot” His work concerning the Tarot, titled "De Marseille," was in collaboration with Philippe Camoin and since the 1980s, he has participated in numerous conferences on the subject. This has led him to develop Psychomagia, with those experiences that are recounted in The Theatre of Healing and The Dance of Reality. Alejandro Jodorowsky also devoted two books to Psychomagia: The Psychomagic Guide and Psychomagia, published in 2019.
ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY
Pascale Montandon-Jodorowsky is a visual artist and designer whose work focuses on time and space and
the relationship between fragility and permanence. Her concern for space, movement, the idea of something that is transitory are constants in its research both in a tactile and atmospheric senses.
She collaborated with Alejandro Jodorowsky to create a common pictorial work called pascALEjandro, as well as on many artistic projects. She worked with him on his latest films La Danza de la Realidad and Poesia Sin Fin, credited with the creation of costumes and colors employed as well as on Psychomagia, un art pouf guérir (Psychomagic, A Healing Art) as the director of photography.
The creator of Jo sets and costumes for choreographer and dancer Carolyn Carlson, she has long explored new forms of creative expression, navigating between visual arts, set design and graphic design, bringing together and fostering dialog among these endeavors that meet and respond to each other.
In 2013, she published a book entitled La Realidad de mi Danza chronicling her entire personal history since childhood until her creation of the costumes for Jodorowsky's film, La Danza de la Realidad. Several books were also published on her personal work and on pascALEjandro, her work in common with Alejandro Jodorowsky, that were the subject of numerous exhibitions around the world.