Μεξικό/Mexico, 1957, μ/α/b&w.
Σκην./Dir.: Alejandro Jodorowsky. Σεν./Scr.:Alejandro Jodorowsky, Thomas Mann (βιβλίο). Μοντ./Ed.: Saoul Gilbert. Μουσ./Mus.: Edgar Bischoff. Ηθ./Cast: Denise Brossot, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Rolande Polya, Saoul Gilbert. Παρ./Prod.: Saoul Gilbert. Διάρκεια/Dur.: 20΄

A short adaptation of a Thomas Mann story about a Parisian urchin who makes her living selling human heads. “La Cravate” is the legendary cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s first work, and it shows.

Μεξικό/Mexico, Ιταλία/Italy, 1989, εγχ./col.

Σκην./Dir.: Alejandro Jodorowski. Σεν./Scr.:Alejandro Jodorowski, Roberto Leoni, Claudio Argento. Φωτ./Cin.: Daniele Nannuzzi. Μοντ./Ed.: Mauro Bonanni. Μουσ./Mus.: Simon Boswell. Ηθ./Cast: Axel Jodorowski, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Thelma Tixou. Παρ./Prod.: Claudio Argento. Διάρκεια/Dur.: 123΄.

A young man is confined in a mental hospital. Through a flashback we see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers: he saw his father cut off the arms of his mother, a religious fanatic and leader of the heretical church of Santa Sangre ("Holy Blood"), and then commit suicide. Back in the present, he escapes and rejoins his surviving and armless mother. Against his will, he "becomes her arms" and the two undertake a grisly campaign of murder and revenge.

Μεξικό/Mexico,  1973, εγχ./col.

Σκην./Dir.: Alejandro Jodorowski. Σεν./Scr.:Alejandro Jodorowski. Φωτ./Cin.: Rafael Corkidi. Μοντ./Ed.: Federico Landeros. Μουσ./Mus.: Alejandro Jodorowski, Ronald Frangipane, Don Cherry.Ηθ./Cast: Alejandro Jodorowski, Horacio Salinas,  Zamira Saunders,  Juan Ferrara. Παρ./Prod.: Alejandro Jodorowski, Roberto Viskin. Διάρκεια/Dur.: 114΄.

A thief carouses the street with his armless-legless dwarf friend when he hears tell of an alchemist who turns feces into gold. He climbs the alchemist's tower to meet him and he takes the thief under his wing, showing the thief his true plan. Along with seven of the world's wealthiest and most corrupt people, he will take him on a spiritual journey to the Holy Mountain.

Μεξικό/Mexico,  1970, εγχ./col.

Σκην./Dir.: Alejandro Jodorowski. Σεν./Scr.:Alejandro Jodorowski. Φωτ./Cin.: Rafael Corkidi. Μοντ./Ed.: Federico Landeros. Μουσ./Mus.: Alejandro Jodorowski, Nacho Méndez. Ηθ./Cast: Alejandro Jodorowski, Brontis Jodorowsky,  Jose Legarreta  Alfonso Arau. Παρ./Prod.: Mick Gochanour, Juan López Moctezuma, Moshe Rosemberg, Saúl Rosemberg. Διάρκεια/Dur.: 125΄.

A black-clad gunfighter wanders the desert until he meets a woman. She insists that to love him, he must be the best gunfighter in the world. To earn that honor he must wander the desert in search of the four great gunmasters. A blood-spattered western filled with symbolism and generous injections of surrealism.

Μεξικό/Mexico,  1968, μ/α/b&w.

Σκην./Dir.: Alejandro Jodorowski. Σεν./Scr.:Alejandro Jodorowski,  Fernando Arrabal (θεατρικό). Φωτ./Cin.:Antonio Reynoso, Rafael Corkidi. Μοντ./Ed.: Fernando Suarez. Μουσ./Mus.: Mario Lozua, Hector Morely, Pepe Ávila. Ηθ./Cast: Sergio Kleiner, Diana MariscaL, María Teresa Rivas, Tamara Garina. Παρ./Prod.: Roberto Viskin, Juan López Moctezuma. Διάρκεια/Dur.: 93΄.

The world has been destroyed in a horrible nuclear calamity, and two of the remaining humans—a crippled girl named Lis and her doting artist companion Fando—wander the devastated landscape hoping to find the fabled city of Tar. Along the way, they run into other survivors who are using the end of the world as their own private den of iniquity. Among all the debauchery and depravity, the two strive to reach their goal

Categorizing Alejandro Jodorowsky’s films can be as hard as assigning a dominant quality to their very own maker.

During his turbulent life, this singular artist, has been not only a film and avant-garde theatre director but also an actor, a mime, a composer, a comic writer, a fiction writer, and even the guru in a mystical school of psychology. Even if the skills of - the born in Russia by Jewish parents and grown up in Chile – Jodorowsky seem limitless, it is his quality as a director that has indelibly marked his creative hyperactivity.

The cinematic Jodorosky seeks that his every film functions as a mystical, transcendental experience for the audience. It is a mixture of wild, hallucinating surrealism with religious, almost mystical allusions, that is, in the end, riveting thanks to its iconoclastic magic.

All these, of course, provided that the viewer is determined to accept the barrage of extreme pictures as well as a content that scorns “consistently” anything conventional. The fact that Jodorowsky has repeatedly received threats for his life can be but accidental. His films are swords ready to twist mercilessly into the guts of social respectability.

The 1968 film Fando y Lis, the filmaker’s first feature film, laid the foundation for the cultivation of his notoriety as a provocative film maker, something that Jodorowsky seemed to seek from the start. The nude, the raw violence and his blasphemous pictures are depicted in a unique way in the black and white canvas; an inhospitable and dystopian world.

Even though El Topo (1970) is based on the aesthetic patterns of the spaghetti western, it develops into a delirious trip, soaked in limitless improprieties, religious and occultist symbols, surreal pictures and situations, in which allegory dominates along with the demystification of the stereotypes of organized religion. The result is a grotesque and violent film which received, over time, mythical dimensions and in which Jodorowsky undertakes to give flesh and blood to the main role (Moses, Buddha and Jesus as a hyper-spatiotemporal presence) in addition to writing, directing and funding the film.

In The Holy Mountain (1973) Jodorowsky finally has at his disposal a budget that is able to support the breadth of his inspiration. This is a film about a transcendental quest which was filmed with a cast that, before the filming, had to undergo mystical training that aimed at illumination. From the provocative use of christian symbols to the artful depiction of worlds that allude to the dominant expressions of human corruption, and from the unbearable violence of a massive massacre to the revelation of the mountain with the primordial secrets, The Holy Mountain is a surreal epic that lives up to its fame.

Santa Sagre (1989) is justifiably considered the most “commercial” and comprehensible film of the Chilean creator, yet it does not cease to comprise a provocative allegory in which horror, illusions, surrealism and the torture of a problematic sexuality, accompanied by their rich symbolic force, hold the main roles.

This year, after a 23year absence from film direction, the 84year old Jodorowsky returns with the film La danza de la Realidad, a film which he has calls autobiographical and one which, as expected, stumbles paroxysmally between a wild fantasy and a cruel reality. The film will be screened in Greece for the first time in the 26th Panorama of European Cinema as part of the world cinema premiers section .