Alejandro Jodorowsky

  Lately I've been following the works of the artistic filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. He's been said to have influenced the works of directors David Lynch and Nicolas Winding Refn. Back in the late 60s is when he began to debut his film career after studying theatre and mime under Etienne Decroux. He contributed alot to the genre of surrealist cinema and was a founding member of the anarchistic avant-garde Panic Movement of performance artists. His first feature titled Fando y Lis caused a huge scandal in Mexico which led to it being banned. His next film El Topo which was released in 1970 later being labeled as an "acid western" combining the traditional qualities of a western with 1960s counter culture.  El Topo is a very cool and bizarre film about a lone ranger played by Jodorowsky himself who embarks on a quest of enlightenment encountering very odd and memorable characters along his journey. He travels across a desert in search to defeat the four great gun masters in order to become the greatest gunman in the land. This movie was considered the first ever midnight cult film. John Lennon praised this movie and promised to fund Jodorowsky with $1 million dollars for his next project titled

"The Holy Mountain". The Holy Mountain also spread throughout the underground cult film circuit. It was characterized by its oddly unique characters and psychedelic scenery. It was describes as a surrealist exploration of western esotericism. He has also written books and regularly lectures on his own spiritual system, which he calls "psychomagic" and "psychoshamanism" and which borrows from his interests in alchemy, the Tarot, Zen Buddhism, and shamanism.