The Seven Lives of Alejandro Jodorowsky

Chilean-born artist Alejandro Jodorowsky (b. 1929) achieved fame for directing and starring in the “acid western” El Topo, a film that first ran for several months as a “midnight movie” in New York City in 1970 and was championed by the likes of John Lennon, who arranged financing for Jodorowsky’s next film, The Holy Mountain. Jodorowsky went on to make several more controversial films, and his failed attempt to film a version of Frank Herbert’s Dune just might be the most famous movie never made. Although his work in the cinema was an ample legacy, as this compendium makes abundantly clear, Jodorowsky’s contributions to that medium were only the tip of his creative iceberg. He was also a playwright, mime, actor, composer, mystic, comics writer, novelist, artist, cartoonist, poet, philosopher—all of which are touched on in this illustrated collection of essays and appreciations compiled by Bernière (Shoot Again).