The Jodorowsky Library: Book One: Volume 1

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky (Spanish: [xo?o'?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 Etienne Decroux, and put his miming skills to use in the silent film Les tetes 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 Cristobal has followed his teachings on psychoshamanism; this work is captured in the feature documentary Quantum Men, directed by Carlos Serrano Azcona.[4]

Fred Beltran is active in several creative fields. He works as a comics artist, but also as a prolific musician. Beltran saw his first comic album published in 1988. In the early 1990s, he contributed to the collective album "Eros Gone Wild" at Humanoids and pursued a subsequent career in architecture, illustration and theatre stage design. Since 1994, Beltran has mostly used the computer on all his comics work, including the coloring of the series "The Technopriests." Also in 1994, the first album of his new band Les Snails is released. Beltran cooperated with the Japanese publishing house Kodansha between 1995 and 1997, producing the series "Nina."

Georges Bess is a French artist, best known for his collaboration with Alexandro Jodorowsky. He moved to Sweden in the early 1970s and it is there that he did his first artistic jobs under his own name or under the pseudonyms Tideli and Nisseman. He cooperated with the Swedish "Mad" magazine, and from 1977 to 1987, drew stories with "The Phantom." In the early 1980s, Bess accidentally traveled to Tibet and became very impressed with the country. It was shortly thereafter that he met and began collaborating with Jodorowsky, in what would become a long and successful collaborative partnership.

Adi Granov is a Bosnian - born comic book artist and conceptual designer. He was named in August 2004 as one of Marvel Comics' "Young Guns", and from there built a remarkable career in the industry working with such creators as Warren Ellis (Iron Man) and in doing film design work (Iron Man, Black Panther, Avengers: Endgame).

Axel Medellin is a comics and conceptual artist whose work has been seen in Heavy Metal, Metal Hurlant, Zenoscope titles, and Elephantmen.