Alejandro Jodorowsky

Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky (Tocopilla, Antofagasta, February 17, 1929) is a Chilean artist, filmmaker and writer, nationalized French, of Ukrainian-Jewish descent. Since 1948 he has worked as a novelist, screenwriter, poet, playwright, essayist, film and theater director, actor, film editor, comics writer, musician, composer, philosopher, puppeteer, mime, psychologist, draughtsman, painter, sculptor, and comic author. He has published 41 original books between 1963 and 2022. He is the author of more than two hundred comics between 1965 and 2022. He has directed ten films between 1957 and 2022.

He is best known for his prolific contribution to avant-garde cinema, especially for The Mole (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). His work is characterized by "violently surreal imagery and a hybrid mix of mysticism and religious provocation", which has earned him wide reverence within cult cinema. Along with Roland Topor and Fernando Arrabal he is the founder of the Pánico movement.

At the age of twenty-four he emigrated from Chile, arriving in Paris (France) in 1953. In 1960 he emigrated to Mexico and then in 1972 to New York (United States); since the end of 1974 he has lived in France.

Biography

Jodorowsky is the son of Ukrainian Jewish emigrants Jaime Jodorowsky Groismann (1901-2001) and Sara Felicidad Prullansky Arcavi. The merchant couple ran a store called Casa Ukrania, in Tocopilla (a city located in the Antofagasta region). He had an older sister, the poet Raquel Jodorowsky (Tocopilla, 1927-Lima, 2011), who lived in Peru since 1949.

After living his first ten years in Tocopilla, the family moved in 1939 to the Quinta Normal commune in the city of Santiago. Jodorowsky completed his secondary studies at the Liceo de Aplicación. He began his artistic activities at a very early age age inspired mainly by literature and cinema. He published his first poetry around 1945. A few years later he worked alongside poets such as Nicanor Parra and Enrique Lihn, while developing his interest in puppetry and pantomime.

At the age of 17, he made his debut as an actor and a year later he created the pantomime troupe Teatro Mímico, together with Lihn, his friend. He enrolled in 1947 in the Philosophy and Psychology courses at the University of Chile, but he dropped out after two years.

In 1948 he wrote his first dramatic text: the puppet play The ticklish ghost. Between 1949 and 1953 he carried out in Santiago some improvised acts of a surrealist nature, which he would later describe as ephemeral (in Mexico) and, from 1962, ephemeral panics in France..

In 1950 he founded the Puppet Theater of the Experimental Theater of the University of Chile (TEUCH) and two years later, together with Lihn and Parra, they created the collage Quebrantahuesos, wall poetry with newspaper clippings.

Jodorowsky leaves Chile in 1953 and travels to Paris to study pantomime with Étienne Decroux, Marcel Marceau's teacher. The following year he joined Marceau's theater company, with whom he toured the world. He attends the courses taught by the philosopher Gaston Bachelard at the Sorbonne as a free student. Jodorowsky made his film debut in 1957 with the short mime La Cravate, praised by Jean Cocteau, who wrote a prologue for this film (the celluloid copy of this short was lost for half a century, until it appeared in 2006 by chance in a loft in Germany).

After appearing in Mexico, he remained, albeit with intervals, in that country until 1974, where he became interested in psychological and mystical issues —which would lead him to start psychotherapy alongside Erich Fromm in Cuernavaca and meditation zen with master Ejo Takata—and directed more than a hundred avant-garde works. Over the next two decades, Jodorowsky created more than one hundred plays.

Between 1960 and 1962, he went with Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor to the café La Promenade de Venus, in Paris, where the sessions of the surrealist group were held and where he met André Breton. Finally they broke with the group and the three authors —Arrabal, Jodorowsky and Topor— founded the Panic Movement in 1962, highly influenced by Alfred Korzybski, Dada, surrealism and the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Although he has two nationalities, Chilean and French, he considers himself a citizen of the world, and does not feel special sympathy for France, although he has lived there since 1953 and has been nationalized since 1980. Thus, he declared about her to the newspaper El País:

I'm staying for the books. Although I am a French citizen and should not say it, I think all the French hate France. The French invite you to tea when they've been with you for 10 years, and to take you home they're waiting for 15 years. Until then, they go to the bathroom to not pay. As Roberto Matta said, "triunfar in Paris is easy, only the first 50 years are difficult."(Jodorowsky vs. Adanowsky)

Personal life

Jodorowsky lives in Paris where he gives classes on his style of tarot and lectures on its techniques (psychomagic and psychogenealogy) at the café Le Téméraire. He is married to the French painter and designer Pascale Montandon.

He has had five children: Brontis, an actor (he has worked with his father on El Topo and La danza de la realidad); Teo, deceased; Cristóbal (Axel - Deceased), psychoshaman and actor (interpreter in Santa Sangre and protagonist of the documentary on psychomagic and shamanism Quantum Men); and the musician Adan Jodorowsky, her youngest son known by the stage name of Adanowsky and Eugenia.

In his religious perspectives, Jodorowsky calls himself a "mystic-atheist".

Comic writer

Jodorowsky at the Japan Expo 2008 in Paris.

His first comic, Aníbal 5, was created in Mexico in mid-1966 with illustrations by Manuel Moro and in the Heraldo de México he had his own weekly strip: Panic Fables (1967-1973). Since the mid-1970s, he has been part of the Associated Humanoids group with other writers and cartoonists specializing in the fantastic and science fiction genre, linked to the magazine Métal Hurlant.

After his fourth film, Tusk, he started El Incal, in collaboration with Jean Giraud, Moebius. This cartoon sinks its roots in the tarot and its symbols; for example, the protagonist, John Difool, is linked to the The Fool card. El Incal would be the first of a series of several comics set in Jodorowsky's particular science fiction universe. Its success was international, with more than a million copies sold in thirty years and translations into more than twenty languages, including Japanese. In 1992, A comic was published in Santiago, a book that had a circulation of barely 500 copies and which included an unpublished, unfinished and posthumous comic written and drawn by Enrique Lihn entitled Roma la loba, whose prologue includes an interview on the art of comic strips and his facet as a scriptwriter and inspiration for numerous cartoonists. Jodorowsky has always indicated that, for almost half a century, comics were his main livelihood, his economic support, since neither his cinema nor his theater have brought him economic benefits:

I fed my five kids and made a lot of money. The comic is an industrial art, a career, a business and at the same time a wonderful art. In France the comic is considered cultural.

His comics have been translated into the main Western languages and distributed in almost all countries in Europe, America and Japan. He has been a comic book writer for 35 years (in the period 1978-2012), and is the author of more than forty comics and more than one hundred albums (adding titles of a single volume and series).

Film career

His cinema has esoteric elements, symbolism and surrealism. Many times branded as incomprehensible, Jodorowsky's films have a place in the so-called cult cinema.

Alejandro Jodorowsky in Sitges, Spain 2006.

In 1967, the father of his private secretary offered him financing to carry out his next play and he shot his first film with him, Fando y Lis, an adaptation of Fernando Arrabal's play of the same name. Starring Diana Mariscal, Sergio Kleiner, his wife Valerie and Juan José Arreola, it was screened at the Acapulco festival in Mexico and Jodorowsky had to flee to avoid being lynched. It is said that Indio Fernández, outraged by the images in the film, even took out his pistol.^{[citation needed]} Attacked by the press, the film was defended before journalists by Roman Polanski, who had been invited to the festival in the company of his wife Sharon Tate.

His second film, El topo, was released in 1970 with the participation of his son Brontis, Alfonso Arau and Mara Lorenzio. With this film Jodorowsky obtained international recognition and John Lennon, through his representative Allen Klein, offered him to distribute the film and finance part of his next project: The Holy Mountain. The main star would be George Harrison, but faced with Jodorowsky's demand to show a close-up of her anus, and the musician's refusal to do so, the director decides not to give him the role.^{[citation required]} The Holy Mountain is the only fictional film based on the enneagram of personality, devised from Sufism by Georges Gurdjieff and developed mainly by Óscar Ichazo and Claudio Naranjo.

The following year he supervised the editing of The Last Movie for doing a favor for his friend Dennis Hopper, director, screenwriter and performer of said film. Also in 1971 he produced Pubertinaje, a Mexican feature film consisting of three episodes: Game of Mirrors (directed by José Antonio Alcaraz), A Christmas Dinner (by Pablo Leder) and Tetrahedron (by Luis Urías). In the first, his sons Brontis and Axel Cristóbal acted; we had to wait until February 1978 to see the premiere in Mexico City. Jodorowsky was also the producer of Apolinar (1972), a feature film directed by Julio Castillo (1944-1988), through Producciones Zohar.

Dune was probably one of Jodorowsky's most ambitious projects, who worked on it for more than 5 years and to which he invited Orson Welles and Salvador Dalí to participate, who would earn $100,000 per minute (since he calculated that his character would appear in a maximum of 4 minutes in the film and Dalí wanted to be the highest paid actor of the moment) and enthusiastically accepted at his hotel in Barcelona, Chris Foss, Pink Floyd, H. R. Giger and Mick Jagger, all under the artistic direction of the French draftsman Moebius. In October 1975, the Spanish painter was dispensed with for positioning himself in favor of the Franco Regime on the occasion of the campaign after the executions of September 27. But the project, delayed countless times, failed: the production company withdrew, leaving more than 3,000 drawings made by Moebius, who later would become the soul of the comic El Incal. In the early eighties, David Lynch made his own film version of Dune, based on Frank Herbert's novel of the same name, a science fiction classic. He would later make an artistic book about his frustrated project, which he would present in 2012 at the renowned Documenta in Kassel.

After half a decade without directing, he films Tusk, a French production shot in India. This is followed in Mexico by his fourth feature film: Santa sangre (1989), produced by Claudio Argento and starring his sons Cristóbal and Adán. Against his will he directs The Rainbow Thief (1990), starring Omar Sharif and Peter O'Toole, one of his biggest failures due to pressure from the company of the Russian-Polish Jewish producer Salkind and his wife, the Mexican painter Berta Domínguez D. (author of the original plot and actress in the film), who take control of the film.

Unrealized film projects

In an interview with Premier Magazine, Jodorowsky said he was planning a gangster movie called King Shot, with Marilyn Manson, who will play a 300-year-old pope. years, and probably with Nick Nolte, who has also expressed interest in working with the director.

Jodorowsky also tried to produce a sequel to El topo under the title The Sons of El Topo and with the participation of Manson and Johnny Depp, but in 2005 he abandoned the project by not finding investors. In any case, that year he began pre-producing Abelcaín , a film in which the character from that film appears, albeit under another name due to a legal fight over the character's rights. As Jodorowsky explained in an interview: “I'm working on a French-Canadian production called Abelcaín, which is a new version of the same project. The character of El Topo has become El Toro. A simple dash added to the letter 'P' has turned an underground rat into a ferocious bull. For true artists, difficulties become opportunities, and clouds become a solid present." Five years later, he resumed the project with the Russian production company Parallell Media Films —the American Raymond J. Markovich (b. 1966, a New Yorker living in Russia since 1993), Olga Mirímskaya and Arcadi Golybovich—, a company specializing in fantastic films in English, with offices in Los Angeles, St. Petersburg and London, but in the spring of 2011 it was canceled due to lack of funds, apparently sine die.

Revaluation of his cinema and legacy

Alejandro Jodorowsky and Spanish writer Diego Moldes, Paris, 2008.

Jodorowsky's cinema is in the middle of the XXI century, experiencing a phase of revaluation, especially in the Anglo-Saxon and French-speaking world. Examples of this new appreciation of his cinema among the new generations are Zoom Back Camera! The Cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky, a book published in 2009 by the Chilean editor Andrea Chignoli, who participated in the restoration of his first four films on DVD in New York (2006) —promoted by the company ABCKO, owner of the rights—, or Alejandro Jodorowsky, by Diego Moldes (Cátedra, Madrid 2012), with a prologue by the multifaceted creator himself.

How does it feel to be labeled as a cult filmmaker? A monographic volume has just been published to which his author, Diego Moldes, titled my name. It's the first time I have in my library a book that's called me. It's like my twin brother. At that very moment I was aware of the value of my filmography. The secret is that I make cinema without economic hope, almost a suicide. The funding of my first films I got from bandits, crazy, naive, fraudsters and bottomless cheques. They've survived in the cinephilic memory because they're honest.

And Jodorowsky adds:

I liked my prologue, I didn't remember him, he's honest and sincere, I mean what I really believe, to believe... I liked your prologue a lot more: all you write about me is for me orgasmic: I finally meet a mind capable of understanding my images better than myself... Because I don't know for sure what I do or want to know, especially I don't want to know: I take steps in the void, with full awareness of how dangerous exercise that is. Thank you, Diego, for the interest you bring to my work, that makes me feel that it was worthwhile to have gone through what I spent to do...

He has influenced the seventh art: Mexican cinema of the seventies (especially Juan López Moctezuma and Rafael Corkidi, filmmakers little appreciated in their country) and filmmakers as different as Dennis Hopper, David Lynch (Eraserhead), Federico Fellini or Darren Aronofsky (The Source of Life, 2006). Jan Kounen quotes him in the acknowledgment of his film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (2009).

An example of this imprint can be found in Fellini, who, after seeing Fando and Lis in Rome under the title Il paese incantato, incorporated Satyricon (1969) some themes, symbols and sequences, such as the gargantuan banquet or the fight scene inside the volcanic crater. In addition, in 1990, after seeing the premiere of Santa sangre in the Italian capital, he sold him the script for Journey to Tulum, in which Jodorowsky himself appears as a character, and which narrates Fellini's trip to Mexico in search of a shaman. The script for this tape was turned into a comic by the famous cartoonist Milo Manara, a regular collaborator of the Chilean-Frenchman.

Nicolas Winding Refn dedicated his film Drive to him in the credits, indicating that it was a tribute to Jodorowsky. In May 2013, this filmmaker met Jodorowsky at the Cannes Film Festival, where he dedicated his film Only God Forgives to him. He explained it this way to the New York Times:

I've been seeing Jodorowsky for the last two years in Paris and we've become very close. Before dinner, we always had a tarot reading and talked about what it means. I feel that, as a filmmaker, he is the last of the great giants of an era that is coming to an end. A year ago, he baptized me as his spiritual son and wanted to reward that gesture.

In June 2012, after twenty-two years without directing, Jodorowsky began filming in his native Tocopilla the film adaptation of the first chapters of his memoirs, The Dance of Reality (which narrates his childhood from 1929 to 1939). The film was released at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2013 within the Directors' Fortnight, in a joint session to pay tribute to the filmmaker, along with the documentary Jodorowsky's Dune (2013), by Frank Pavich. Two and a half months later, on August 31, the film was shown for free in Tocopilla; it arrived in commercial theaters in France on September 5.

Some international critics evaluate The Dance of Reality as follows: The Guardian called it "brilliant", while Le Monde considered it "exceptional"; American magazines such as Variety and Hollywood Reporter , as well as practically all of the French press, expressed similar terms., Anglo-Saxon, Spanish and Latin American, with some exceptions such as El Mundo.

Influence on music

The influence of Jodorowsky's cinema extends to modern music, to artists as diverse as John Lennon, Peter Gabriel or Marilyn Manson (all three his personal friends at different stages of their lives).^{[ citation required]} Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez López, leaders of the rock group The Mars Volta, are great admirers of the filmmaker and tried to make their songs as similar to their films as possible. On one occasion Rodríguez-López camped out for 8 hours outside Jodorowsky's house just to be able to communicate with him.

Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland said the film The Holy Mountain was a big influence on him, especially as a visual artist, and the concept album Lotus Island from 2013 belonging to her group Black Light Burns is a tribute to her. Another admirer is Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor.

On August 28, 2011, the video clip Born Villain was released —directed by the actor Shia LaBeouf in collaboration with Marilyn Manson, who in addition to the music also appears as a performer—, which has notable references and homages to two Jodorowsky films: The Holy Mountain (Manson's favorite film) and The Mole.

Jodorowsky's films on DVD and Blu-Ray Disc

Until 2004 Fando y Lis and Holy Blood were the only Jodorowsky films available on DVD, in out-of-print copies. The Mole and The Holy Mountain were not available for video or DVD until 2004, due to disputes with distributor and owner Allen Klein. However, in 2004 Jodorowsky and Allen Klein settled the dispute, restoring the films in 2006, at the production company's studio in New York, which led to the announcement of Jodorowsky's film distribution. On January 19, 2007 the Digitalbits website announced that on May 1, 2007 Anchor Bay will distribute a package that will include The Mole, The Holy Mountain and Fando and Lis (the three films that Jodorowsky considers "his"). A limited edition will include the soundtracks of the first two; however, copies of these tapes have been circulating illegally on the Internet for years.

In Spain, the independent company Cameo Media edited and distributed the ABKCO pack in July of that year, with the aforementioned soundtracks, in addition to distributing its Mexican trilogy on DVD separately. Vellavisión released Santa sangre, but that DVD is out of print. In Germany, The Rainbow Thief was released on DVD in 2010, announced as the director's cut (director's cut), something that Jodorowsky has denied.

In the United States, at the beginning of 2011, his four Mexican feature films were released for the first time on Blu-Ray Disc: Fando y Lis, El topo, The Holy Mountain (ABCKO Films) and Holy Blood (Severin Films). This last film was presented by Jodorowsky in New York, with wide coverage in the media, including an interview in the prestigious The Wall Street Journal.

Novels

Following the chronological order in which they were written (and not in their order of publication), Jodorowsky's five novels are: The Parrot of Seven Languages (1991), The Anxieties Carnivores from Nothing (1995), Where a Bird Sings Best (1992), The Black Thursday Child (1999) and Albina and the dog-men (1999). They have been translated into numerous languages, including English, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese.

The critical prestige of his novels is late and very limited in the Hispanic sphere. This was not the case in the French-speaking sphere. Indeed, although his narrative was not published in Spanish until the 1990s, some of his novels first appeared in the previous decade, the 1980s, in translations into French, thanks to the work and enthusiasm of the French editor and translator Gérard de Cortanze: Les araignées sans mémoire (Les Humanoïdes Associés, col. La Bibliothèque Humanoïde, Paris, 1980), Le Paradis des perroquets (Flammarion, col. Baroque, Paris, 1984), Grand Prix of Black Humor, and Enquête sur un chemin de terre (Acropole, Paris, 1988).

Psychomagic and psychogenealogy

Psychomagic is a technique created and practiced by Jodorowsky, which aims to serve as "spiritual healing". Although it proposes to resolve psychological and even somatic conflicts, it is not a scientific technique nor is it reproducible. Jodorowsky himself acknowledges that he is not situated "in the scientific field". According to this, it has its roots in shamanism, tarot, psychoanalysis and the effect of theater. "For me, psychomagic is like a derivation from poetry, from theater... from everything I've done."

Jodorowsky bases his methodology on the premise (without scientific foundation) that the unconscious takes symbolic acts as if they were real events, so that a magical-symbolic-sacred act could modify the behavior of the unconscious, and consequently, if it were well applied, cure certain psychological traumas. These acts are "custom designed" and are prescribed after the "psychomagus" analyzes the client's personal peculiarities, and even studies her family tree. For this, Jodorowsky created psychogenealogy. This part of the premise that certain traumas and unconscious behaviors are transmitted from generation to generation, so that, for an individual to become aware of them and be able to detach from them, it is necessary to study and perform psychomagic acts based on their tree. genealogy and the patterns that exist in it.

Jodorowsky and the tarot

For Jodorowsky, the tarot is a sacred element and a deep psychological search that works through the interpretation of codes. His passion for the unknown and, above all, for understanding the tarot led him to accumulate more than 1,500 different tarots, but it was finally the Tarot de Marseille, the oldest known, dating back to the year 1400 and whose figures are from medieval times, the that seduced him After analyzing, one by one, the 78 cards of the Marseille Tarot (22 major arcana and 56 minor arcana) he deduced that it is a great encyclopedia of symbols in which everything means something; a language that speaks of the present and not of the future and that when used to speak of the future is a scam. The interpretation that Jodorowsky gave to each of the 22 major arcana of the Tarot de Marseille led him to propose a method so that each person, knowing the meaning of the cards, can read the tarot for themselves.

Collaborations in the press

In 2008 Jodorowsky compiled his letters to readers published in the supplement XL of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica during the year 2007, in a section titled Psychoposta (psychomail, in Italian) publishing it in book form under the title Therapeutic Mail.

Controversies

In July 2016, Jodorowsky sparked a controversy on Twitter when he posted: "Sexual abuse can be ferocious or it can be seductive if it's incest. Incestuous abuse may not be violent and awaken an Oedipus. The message caused negative reactions among users of said network; one of them replied: 'When I was a child I suffered sexual abuse. Now, despite loving him, it's hard for me to want my partner", to which the writer advised: "Disguise him as the one who abused you, and he'll turn you on". After the criticism, Jodorowsky deleted the second message, stating: "I didn't delete the tweet because I regret it, but because many seem to not want or cannot understand it".

Works

Filmography as a filmmaker

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Producer	Notes	Ref.
1957	The Cravate	Yes.	Yes.	No.	Short film
1968	Fando and Lis	Yes.	Yes.	No.
1970	The Top	Yes.	Yes.	No.	Also composer, costume designer and production
1973	The sacred mountain	Yes.	Yes.	Yes.
1980	Tusk	Yes.	Yes.	No.
1989	Holy blood	Yes.	Yes.	No.
1990	The thief of the rainbow	Yes.	No.	No.
2013	The Dance of Reality	Yes.	Yes.	Yes.
2016	Endless poetry	Yes.	Yes.	No.
2019	Psychomagia, a healthy art	Yes.	Yes.	No.	Documentary

Filmography as an actor

Literature (theater)

• The Cosy Ghost (Initiatic Farewell) (1948)
• Princess Spider (1958)
• Sacramental Melodrama (1965)
• Zaratustra (1970)
• The tunnel that is eaten by the tail (self sacramental panic) (1970)
• The game we all play (1970)
• The converted mire (Pananic tradition) (1971)
• The dream (paráfrasis of the work of Augusto Strindberg) (1971)
• Pedrolino (mimodrama ballet) (1998)
• Panic Opera (tragic Cabaret) (2001)
• School of Ventrilocuos (preposterous average) (2002)
• The three old (grotesque medrama) (2003)
• Hypermarket (infamous carrier) (2004)
• The endless dream (sublime drama) (2006)
• Real blood (old drama) (2007)
• Endless theater (tragedies, comedies and mimodramas), anthology that includes all previous titles; Siruela, Madrid, 2007.
• Le gorille (El gorila)of 2009, inspired by the story Report for an academy (Ein Bericht für eine Akademie1917), by Franz Kafka.

Narrative, poetry and essay

• Counting panicswith illustrations by Roland Topor; Editorial Novaro, 1963
• Theater panic, Editorial Novaro, 1965
• Panic games, Editorial Novaro, 1965
• The mole, pagnetic fable with images, original script of the homonymous film, Novaro, 1970
• The parrot of seven languages, novel, Grijalbo, 1991 (2.a ed.: Siruela, 2005)
• The sacred trap: Conversations with Gilles Farcet, interview, Grijalbo, 1991 (enlarged edition: Chandra, 2007)
• Where best to sing a bird, novel, Grijalbo, 1992 (2.a ed.: Siruela, 2002)
• The carnivorous cravings of nothing, novel, Grijalbo, 1995 (2.a ed.: Siruela, 2006)
• Psychomagia, essay, Seix Barral, 1995 (2th expanded edition: Siruela, 2007)
• Shadows at noon, Dolmen, Santiago, 1995
• Panic anthologycompilation of texts by Daniel González-Dueñas, 1996
• The Gospels to Healessay, 1997, 2nd edition: Siruela, 2007)
• The wisdom of jokes, essay, with illustrations by George Bess; Obelisco, 1997
• The boy of black Thursday, novel, Siruela, 1999
• Albina and the men-dog, novel, with illustrations by François Boucq; Grijalbo, Mexico / Siruela, Madrid, 2000
• It's not enough to say, poetry, Visor, 2000
• The Dance of RealityMemories, Siruela, 2001
• The Goose Pass, stories, Visor, 2001
• The wisdom of stories, essay, Obelisco, 2001
• The ladder of angels, essay, Obelisco, 2001
• The Treasure of ShadowMemories, Siruela, 2003
• The finger and the moon, essay, Obelisco, 2004
• Stones of the way, poetry, Obelisco, 2004
• The track of the tarotessay, co-authoring with Marianne Costa; Seruela, 2004
• Me, the tarot, essay and poetry, Siruela, 2004
• The teacher and the magiciansMemories, Siruela, 2005
• Just love, poetry, Visor, 2006
• Mystic Cabaretphilosophy and psychology, Siruela, 2006
• Therapeutic mail, essay, The Book Sphere, 2008
• Manual of Psychomagia (consequences to heal your life)Siruela, 2009
• Steps in the vacuum, poetry, Visor, 2009
• Three magic stories (for mutant children), Siruela, 2009; includes:
  • Memories of a fire child (semiautobiography), Loïe from heaven and The incredible human fly
• Magical Tales and Intramundoincludes the previous three royalties plus 56 microtexts under the title Tales of the IntramundoRandom House Mondadori, 2010
• Endless poetry, all its lyrics; Editorial Huacanamo, 2009
• Metagenealogyessay, co-authoring with Marianne Costa; Seruela, 2011
• Gold eye (metaphorisms, psycho-proverbs and poetry)created from Twitter; Siruela, 2012
• Essential travel, poetry, Editions Corriente Alterna, 2012; 2.a ed. augmented: Siruela 2016.
• 365 tweets of wisdomcreated from Twitter; Siruela, 2014
• Life is a story, exclusive digital edition Amazon, 2014 and Siruela 2015.
• 365 tweets of lovecreated from Twitter; Siruela, 2015.
• From psychomagia to psychotranceSiruela, 2022.

Comics (series and individual titles)

The dates are those of the first original edition, published in Spanish the first 3 (in Mexico) and in French the rest (in Paris). In the case of comic series, the date indicates the first volume or album

• Hannibal 5, series of 6 albums made with the cartoonist Manuel Moro; Mexico City, 1966
• Unbearable Borbollawith Moro, Mexico City, 1966
• Panic fables, reprints of strips published in the newspaper Herald of Mexico, Jodorowsky script and drawing, 1967-1973; complete series of 284 pneumatic fables, Grijalbo, 2003
• The eyes of the cat (Les Yeux du chat, Paris, 1978), with the drawing Moebius
• The Incal (Paris, 1981-1989), series of 6 albums with the drawer Moebius, 1. The Black Incal, 2. The Incal Light, 3. What's Down, 4. What's up, 5. Fifthness - part one, and 6. Fifthness - part 2.
• The adventures of Alef-Thau (Les Aventures d'Alef-Thau, Paris, 1983-1998), first with the artist Arno and then with Al Covial; series of 8 albums
• The jealous God (Le Dieu Jaloux, Paris, 1984), with the sketch artist Silvio Cadelo
• L’Ange Carnivore (Paris, 1986), Cadelo
• The saga of Alendor (Allandor, 1984-1991), with Cadelo; integral edited in 1991 that brings together the two previous albums, Le Dieu Jaloux and L’Ange Carnivore.
• Magic twins, (Les jumeaux magiques, Paris, 1987), with the cartoonist George Bess
• Before the Incal (Avant l'Incal, 1988-1995), series of 6 albums with the sketch artist Zoran Janjetov
• The white lama (Le Lama blancParis, 1988-1993), with the artist George Bess. Series of 6 albums.
• Aníbal Zinq (Aníbal Cinq, 1990-1992), series of 2 albums with Bess
• The crowned heart (Le Cœur couronné, Paris, 1992-1998), series of 2 albums with Moebius
• The caste of the Metabarons (The Caste des Méta-Barons, Paris, 1992-2002), with the artist Juan Giménez López. Series of 8 albums and 2 extra albums: HS1 La Maison des ancêtres and HS2 L’Univers des Méta-Barons (drawing variearies), both in 2000
• The passion of the Goddess (Oh, God., Paris, 1992), with the drawer Jean-Claude Gal
• Moon face (Face of lune, 1992-2004), series of 5 albums with the cartoonist François Boucq
• Oda al X (Paris, 1993), with Bess
• The verité est au fond des rêves (Paris, 1993), with the drawer Jean-Jacques Chaubin
• Angel claws (Griffes d’angeParis, 1994), with Moebius
• Juan Solo (Paris, 1995-1999), series of 4 albums with Bess
• Gilles Hamesh, private detective of everything (Gilles Hamesh, privé (of tout), Paris, 1995), with the drawer Durandur (Michel Durand)
• Allior (Aliot,1: Le Fils des ténèbres, Paris, 1996), with the artist Victor de la Fuente
• The Tecnopadres (Paris, 1998-2006), series of 8 albums with the sketch artist Zoran Janjetov
• Le tresor de l'ombre (Paris, 1999), with Boucq
• Megalex(Paris, 1999), series of 3 albums with the cartoonist Fred Beltran
• After the Incal (Après l'Incal, Paris, 2000), with Moebius
• Bouncer (Paris, 2001-2009), series of 7 albums with Boucq
• The Borgia (Borgia, Paris, 2004-2010), series of 4 albums with Milo Manara
• Astéroïde hurlant (Paris, 2006), with several drawers of Humanoid Associates
• Pietrolino (Paris, 2007-2008), series of 2 albums with the sketch artist Olivier Boiscommun
• The world of Alef-Thau (Le mond d'Alef-Thau, Paris, 2008-2009), series of 2 albums with the drawer Marco Nizzoli
• Les Armes du Méta-Baron (Paris, 2008), with the drawers Travis Charest and Janjetov
• Final Incal (Paris, 2008-2011), 2 tomos with the Ladrönn drawer: The Four of John Difool (2008) and Louz de Garra (2011)
• Castaka - La Casta de los Metabarones (Paris, 2008-2014), with the cartoonist Julio Martínez Pérez, alias Das Pastoras. Take 1: 1. Dayal · The First Ancestor. Take 2: 2. La Gemelas Rivales
• The terrible Pope (It's terrible., Paris, 2009), series of 2 albums with the drawer Theo Caneschi and colors of Sébastien Gérard
• Royal blood (Sang royal, Paris, 2010-2012), 3 tomos with the sketch artist Dongzi Liu
• Ogregod (Paris, 2010-2012), 2 tomos with Janjetov: Les Naufragés2010, and Sans futur, 2012
• Showman Killer (Paris, 2010-2012), series of 3 albums with the sketch artist Nicolas Fructus. Take 1: A Heartless Hero2010; 2: El Niño de Oro2012; 3: Invisible Women, 2012
• The children of the Top (Les Fils d'El Topo, Paris, 2016-2017), Les Fils d'El Topo - Take 1 Caïn, The children of the Top. Volume 1: Cain, drawing: José Ladrönn, Reservoir Books, Barcelona 2016.
• The Knights of Heliópolissaga with drawings by Belgian designer Jeremy Petiqueux (1984)
  • Nigredo, l'œuvre au noir, Glénat, Grenoble, 2017
  • Albedo, l’œuvre au blanc, Glénat, Grenoble, 2018

Bibliography of comics in Spanish

• Hannibal 5: drawing by Manuel Moro. Published in Mexico by the Novaro publishing house in six independent booklets approximately in 1966 (“The Threat of Women in the Top”, “The Five Women of the Annibal 5”, “The Cemetery of the Satellites”, “El Hombre Mujer”, “Las Momias Románticas”, and “La Risa del Canguro”), and never republished.
• The Unbearable Borbolla: drawing of Manuel Moro. Published in Mexico by the Novaro editorial in a single independent booklet, approximately in 1966, and never republished.
• The Incal: Moebius drawing. “definitive” edition, published by Norma Editorial in a single volume (cartoné) in September 2007, with new cover and new colouring. It had previously been published by Norma Editorial in a single volume (cartoné) in December 2000 with the original colouring (second edition in 2003, with a different cover and accompanied by a gift t-shirt). In 2017, Reservoir Books published an integral edition in a single volume. The first Spanish editions were:
  • The Black Incal, Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 11, October 1983
  • The Incal Light, Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 12, December 1983
  • What's down, Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 19, April 1985
  • What's up, Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 22, December 1985; edited in April 1992 by Norma Editorial (rústica) in a slightly larger format
  • The fifth essencepart, Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 28, November 1988
  • The fifth essencepartly Planet Diphool, Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 29, March 1989
  • Editions B published in a curious format (11 × 18 cm) the first three parts, in the collection Dragon Pocket, numbers 1 (The Black IncalFebruary 1990), 2 (The Incal LightFebruary 1990 and 7 (Incal III: What Is BelowJanuary 1991). In October 2008, Ediciones Glènat also published L’Incal, Catalan translation of the work, in a single volume and in rustic format.
• Alef-Thau: drawing of Arno (the eighth and last, of Covial). The different Spanish editions of the eight volumes have been the following:
  • The Tronco Boy (retitling) Alef-Thau on the cover), Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 16, September 1984 (2nd edition: 1990)
  • Prince Manco, Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 21, September 1985 (Norma Editorial, collection The Adventures of Alef-Thau (II), February 2000; 2.a and last edition: May 2003)
  • King Tuerto, Eurocomic, Collection Humanoides number 25, February 1987 (Norma Editorial, collection The Adventures of Alef-Thau (III), March 2000)
  • The Lord of illusions, Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 30, April 1989
  • The Cojo Emperor, Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 32, September 1990
  • Man without reality, Norma Editorial, collection The Adventures of Alef-Thau (VI), April 1992
  • The gate of truth, Norma Editorial, collection The Adventures of Alef-Thau (VII), July 1995
  • The triumph of the dreamer, Norma Editorial, collection The Adventures of Alef-Thau (VIII), March 2000
• The jealous God, Cadelo drawing; Eurocomic, Humanoid Collection number 27, February 1988. From the second part of the story, The carnivorous angel, a total of 37 pages were published, distributed in numbers 45, 46 and 47 (1986) of the Spanish edition of the magazine Hurlant
• The white lama, drawing by Georges Bess; Norma Editorial, six tomos (rústica) within the Pandora Collection (numbers 1, 5, 11, 21, 40, and 48), respectively entitled:
  • The white lamaDecember 1989 (2nd edition: June 1997)
  • The second visionMarch 1990 (2nd edition: June 1997)
  • The third earOctober 1990
  • The fourth voiceAugust 1991
  • Hand closed, hand openApril 1993
  • Water triangle, fire triangleMay 1994. In April 2007, it was edited in a single volume (cartoné) by the Rossell publishing house, with an interesting notebook of drawings and annotations by Bess
• Travel to Tulum, script and drawing of Milo Manara, with Jodorowsky appears as a character; Editorial New Comic (rústica), 1990
• Hannibal Five, drawing by Georges Bess; Norma Editorial, dos tomos (rústica), October 1991, within the Pandora Collection (n.o 23: Ten women before they dieNo. 35: The man-female)
• Címoc special dreams, script and drawing of several authors (a fragment of Psychomagia, a psychotherapy, accompanied by photographs by Jodorowsky); Norma Editorial (rústica), December 1991, within the Címoc Especial collection (n.o 11)
• A comic, script and drawing by Enrique Lihn (contains a long interview with Jodorowsky where he explains his relationship with the cartoon until that time, as well as his way of working in the middle); Pablo Brodsky, Santiago de Chile, January 1992 (only 500 copies)
• The Passion of God in loveJean-Claude Gal's drawing. Published by Norma Editorial within the magazine “Címoc”, specifically in the numbers 145 (June 1993), 146 (July 1993) and 147 (August 1993).
• The caste of the metabaronsJuan Giménez's drawing. The different Spanish editions of the eight volumes (more the extra The Ancestors' House) have been the following:
  • Othon the great-grandfather, Editions B (cartoné), collection The Books of Co Fashion (n. 5), June 1993; Editorial Standard both in Rustic (Painting Collection n.o 76) and in Cartoné, July 1998 (its last edition is the fourth, December 2003)
  • Honorata the tatarabuela, Editions B (cartoné), collection The Books of Co Fashion (n. 13), May 1994; Editorial Standard both in Rustic (Painting Collection n.o. 77) and in Cartoné, August 1998, (its last edition is the third, January 2003)
  • Grab the great-grandfather, Editorial Standard both in rustic (Collection Pandora n.o 61) and in cartoné, October 1996, (its last edition is the fourth, January 2006)
  • Oda the great-grandmother, Editorial Standard both in Rustic (Collection Pandora n.o 69, November 1997) and in Cartoné (January 1998)
  • Iron Head, Grandpa, Editorial Standard both in rustic (Collection Pandora n.o 81) and in cartoné, May 1999, (its last edition is the third, December 2003)
  • Doña Vicenta Gabriela de Rokha, Grandma, Editorial Standard both in rustic (Collection Pandora n.o 87) and in cartoné, June 2000, (its last edition is the second, August 2002)
  • Aghora, the father-mother, Norma Editorial both in rustic (Collection Pandora n.o 96) and in cartoné, July 2002
  • No Name, the last metabaron, Editorial Standard both in rustic (Collection Pandora n.o 101) and in cartoné, in December 2003
  • The Ancestors' House, Editorial Standard both in rustic (Collection Pandora n.o 92) and in cartoné, March 2002. In October 2007, the publishing house Mondadori published the nine volumes in a single volume (cartoné), in a smaller format, and Glénat began its publication in Catalan language (The nissaga dels metabarons) in three compilation volumes, of which the first came out in April 2008
• Moon face, drawing by François Boucq; Norma Editorial (cartoné), in five volumes:
  • The Wave DommerApril 2005
  • The invisible cathedral, May 2005 (published in rustic previously in the collection Címoc Extra Color Number 103, June 1993)
  • The stone of the top, November 2005 (published in rustic previously in the collection Címoc Extra Color number 148, March 1998)
  • The heavenly womanDecember 2005
  • The Egg of the SoulJanuary 2006
• The crowned heart, drawing of Moebius; Norma Editorial, a single volume (cartoné), December 2006 (the cover is that of the second volume, The trap of the irrationalbut it doesn't pick the other two. Previously it had appeared in three loose volumes:
  • The madness of the Sacré-Coeur, rustic, 1993, and later in cartoné
  • The trap of the irrational, rustic, 1995, and later in cartoné
  • The madman of La Sorbonne, cartoné, 2000
• Angel claws, drawing of Moebius; Editions La Cúpula (serialized) in the magazine Kiss ComixNumbers 43-56 (end of 1995, beginning of 1996)
• Double secret, drawing of Sylvain; short story (7 pages) published by La Cúpula in the magazine The ViperIn the special Cinema and TV1996
• Megalex, drawing by Fred Beltran; Norma Editorial in three volumes (cartoné):
  • The anomalyJune 2000
  • The Coated AngelAugust 2002
  • The heart of KavatahMarch 2009
• After the Incal, drawing of Moebius; Norma Editorial (cartoné), December 2001 (appeared only the first volume, The new dream,” which did not continue as such)
• Juan Solo, drawing of Georges Bess, Planet DeAgostini, four tomos (cartoné), 2002 (recollected later in a case):
  • Son of the gun
  • The dogs of power
  • Meat and sarna
  • Holy Bastard
• Bouncer, drawing by François Boucq; Norma Editorial, seven tomos (cartoné):
  • A diamond for the beyondMay 2002
  • The pity of the executionersJanuary 2003
  • The justice of serpentsMay 2004
  • The Revenge of the MancoSeptember 2005
  • The wolves' preyMay 2007
  • The Black WidowApril 2009
  • Heart torn apartMarch 2010
• Hurlant: the stories signed by Jodorowsky in the numbers published in Spain were:
  • No. 1, October-November 2002, with the story of three pages The word, drawn by Marc Riou & Mark Vigouroux, plus the first nine pages drawn by Travis Charest of what would then be Methbaron weaponsentitled here The last of the Metabarons
  • No. 2, December 2002-January 2003, with the history of twelve pages The invasion, drawn by Igor Baranko
  • No. 3, March-April 2003, with the story of ten pages Eucharist Sun, drawn by J.H. Williams III
  • No. 4, May-June 2003, with the history of nine pages The loyal Khondor, drawn by Pascal Alixe
  • No. 5, July-August 2003, with the story of ten pages The blame, drawn by Christian Højgaard
  • No. 6, September-October 2003, with the 11-page story Who's dreaming now?, drawn by Jerome Opena
• Organic Fables: collection of all comics drawn by Jodorowsky for the newspaper The Herald of MexicoGrijalbo, Mexico 2003
• The Tecnopadres: drawing by Zoran Janjetov and color by Fred Beltran; Norma Editorial, eight tomos (cartoné; collected in a single book by the same editorial in March 2011, of smaller dimensions):
  • The Tecno PreschoolMay 2003
  • Nohope Prison SchoolJanuary 2004
  • Planet-GamesJuly 2005
  • Halkattraz, the star of the executionersNovember 2005
  • La Secta de los Tecno-ObisposFebruary 2006
  • The Secrets of TecnovaticanoApril 2006
  • The perfect gameAugust 2006
  • The promised galaxySeptember 2007
• Stories of Mr. Trance: text, script and drawing by Valerio Veneras (Jodorowsky appears as a comical character, in addition to writing the introduction); Editorial Casariego (slide with flaps), 2004
• Magic twins: drawing by Georges Bess; Norma Editorial (cartoné), February 2005
• The Borgia: drawing by Milo Manara, Norma Editorial, three tomos (cartoné) until now (in France the fourth and presumably last volume was published, entitled Tout est vanité(c):
  • Blood for the Pope, December 2005 (2nd edition: March 2007), Manara Collection Color n.o 22
  • Power and incestJune 2006, Manara Collection Color No. 23
  • The poison and the bonfireSeptember 2009
• Castaka: drawing of Das Pastoras; Norma Editorial, February 2008; a volume so far:
  • Dayal, the first ancestor, history is related to the cycle The caste of the metabarons
• Before the Incal: drawing by Zoran Janjetov; Norma Editorial (cartoné), November 2008 (republished later in a smaller format with new cover. Eurocomic had published in the Humanoid Collection No. 31, May 1990 (Russian), the first of the six parts, entitled The Youth of John Difool, with the original drawing of Janjetov, before being modified. There's data suggesting that part two came out, too. Private class R Detective on March 33, 1991, but if it really became so, its existence was so ephemeral that it seems to have not survived a single copy. In 2021, Reservoir Books published an integral edition in a single volume.
• Pietrolino: drawing by Olivier G. Boiscommun; Norma Editorial (cartoné), May 2009
• Final Incal: drawing of Ladrönn; Norma Editorial (cartoné), 2009-2015; three volumes. In 2022, Reservoir Books published an integral edition in a single volume (including After the Incal de Moebius).
  • The four John Difool (2009)
  • Light of Garra (2011)
  • Gorgo the dirty (2015)
• Frank Cappa: script and drawing of Manfred Sommer (Jodorowsky appears as author of one of the prologues, as advertised on the cover); Editions Glénat (cartoné), 2010
• Methbaron weapons: drawing of Travis Charest and Zoran Janjetov; Planet DeAgostini (cartoné), May 2010
• Royal blood: drawing of Dongzi Liu; Editions Glénat (cartoné), May 2010; a volume so far:
  • Sacred weddings
• The eyes of the cat: drawing by Moebius; Norma Editorial (cartoné), August 2010 (previously appeared in the number 1 of the Spanish edition of the magazine Hurlant, Editorial Nueva Frontera, 1981, in black and white and with a fairly poor reproduction)

Awards

• Special mention at the Taormina International Film Festival, by The Holy MountainIn 1973.
• Special Jury Award at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, by The mole1974.
• Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir (prix de l'Humour noir Xavier Forneret) for his novel Le Paradis des dogquets, Flammarion (Baroque), Paris, 1984 (ISBN 2-08-064707-5) (Paris, 1984).
• Fantafestival Award (Innerzionale show of the Film di Fantascienza e del Fantastico) from Rome to the set of his career, 1989.
• Award for the best comic script at the Angulema International Festival of comics: Angoulême l'Alph'art du meilleur scénario pour le premier volume de sa nouvelle série avec Georges Bess, Juan Solo(Angulema, January 1996).
• Jack Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from Chicago Underground Film Festival (Chicago, 2000)
• 2001 Haxtur Award for "Best Long History" for "The Heart Crowned" in the International Comic Hall of the Principality of Asturias Gijón.
• 2001 Haxtur Award for "Autor que Amamos" in the International Comic Hall of the Principality of Asturias Gijón.
• Eléphant d’Or Award: Prix du meilleur album de l’année et Prix du public pour Bouncer T2, La Pitié des bourreaux (Les Humanoïdes Associés, Paris, 2006).
• Prix Albert Uderzo Award: Sanglier du meilleur dessin pour Bouncer T4, La Vengeance du manchot (Les Humanoïdes Associés, Paris, 2006).
• Time Machine Award awarded by the Sitges Film Festival, by its director Angel Sala (October 2006).
• Waldemar Daninsky Prize for a career dedicated to fantastic cinema and horror, as well as literature and fantastic comic, VII International Week of Fantastic Film and Terror of Estepona (Estepona, 2006).
• Award for the "Trayectoria como Cineasta" of the International Film Festival of the North of Chile.
• On April 27, 2006, the Order was given to the Artistic and Cultural Merit Pablo Neruda (Chile 2006) by Michelle Bachelet.
• On June 10, 2011, he received the ABC Cultural ABC Award from the cultural supplement of El Corte Inglés, from the hands of his directors, Fernando Rodríguez Lafuente and Ramón Pernas. (Madrid, 2011).
• Saint-Germain Award awarded on 21 January 2014 by The regle du Jeu, association chaired by Bernard-Henri Lévy, a The Dance of Reality, as Best Foreign Film released in France in 2013.
• Honor Pardo d'Onore Award for the Locarno International Film Festival, for the set of his film work, on August 14, 2016.

Additional bibliography

• CABREJO, José Carlos (2019), Jodorowsky Cinema as a Trip, Editorial Fund Universidad de Lima, Lima. ISBN 978-99-72-45497-4
• COBB, Ben (2007). Anarchy and Alchemy: The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky (Persistence of Vision 6)ed. Louise Brealey, pref. Alan Jones, int. Stephen Barber, April 2007, London / August 2007, Creation Books, New York. ISBN 978-18-40-68145-1
• COILLARD, Jean-Paul (2009), From the cage au grand écran. Entretiens avec Alejandro Jodorowsky, K-Inite Editions, Paris. ISBN 978-29-15-55109-9
• CHIGNOLI, Andrea (2009), Zoom back, Camera! The Cinema of Alexander Jodorowsky, Uqbar Editores, Santiago de Chile. ISBN 978-95-68-60138-6
• DOMÍNGUEZ ARAGONÉS, Edmundo (1980). Three extraordinary: Luis Spota, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Emilio "Indio" Fernández; Juan Pablos Editor, Mexicali, Mexico City. P. 109–146.
• GONZÁLEZ, Házael (2011), Alejandro Jodorowsky: Dancing with reality, Dolmen Editorial, Palma de Mallorca. ISBN 978-84-15-20122-9
• LAROUCHE, Michel (1985). Alexandre Jodorowsky, cynate panique, ça cinéma, Albatros, Paris. ISBN 978-27-60-60661-6
• MOLDES, Diego (2012). Alejandro Jodorowsky, prologue of Alexander Jodorowsky, Col. Sign and Image / Cineastas, Editions Cátedra, Madrid. ISBN 978-84-376-3041-0
• MONTELEONE, Massimo (1993). The Talpa and the Fenice. Il cinema di Alejandro JodorowskyGranata Press, Bologna. ISBN 978-88-72- 48070-0