The Transformative Cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky

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Alejandro Jodorowsky is a theatre director, writer of graphic novels and comics, novelist, poet, and an expert in the Tarot. He is also an auteur filmmaker who garnered attention with his breakthrough film El Topo in 1970. He has been called a cult filmmaker, whose films are surreal, hallucinatory, and provocative. The Transformative Cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky explores the ways in which Jodorowsky's films are transformative in a psychologically therapeutic way. It also examines his signature style, which includes the symbolic meaning of various colors in which he clothes his actors, the use of his own family members in the films, and his casting of himself in leading roles. This total involvement of himself and his family in his auteur films led to his psycho-therapeutic theories and practices: metagenealogy and psychomagic. This book is the only the second book in the English language in print that deals with all of Jodorowskys films, beginning with his earliest mime film in 1957 and ending with his 2019 film on psychomagic. It also connects his work as a writer and therapist to his films, which themselves attempt to obliterate the line between fantasy and reality.

Reviews

Melnyk has provided the first complete and up-to-date overview of the beloved and notorious cult directors cinema, with vivid insights into the personal style and themes of this complex and sometimes maddening avant-garde auteur of the outlandish. * Philip R. Fagan, Professor of Experimental Media, University of Texas, USA, and author of Philips Shadow: A Subcultural History Featuring the Actor Philip Norman Fagan(2021) *
Alejandro Jodorowskys cinema has long been associated with esoteric mysticism and shockingly surreal imagerybut in this accessible new volume, George Melnyk steps back from Jodorowsky the cult provocateur to refocus our attention on Jodorowsky the therapeutic auteur. By connecting his early films to his late-career revival, Melnyk deftly explores the autobiographical themes of family, spirituality, and healing that have made Jodorowsky such an intriguingly idiosyncratic and underappreciated figure in world cinema. * David Church, Lecturer, Indiana University, USA *

Author Bio

George Melnyk is Professor Emeritus of Communication, Media, and Film at the University of Calgary, Canada. His research interest is the auteur film maker and how the cultural grammars of their lives find their way into their films.