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I Think The Art Of Filmmaking Is Something You Learn Through Actions, By Doing It, Not By Learning Theories. And As You Do It, Your Mind Starts To Change.

-Alejandro Jodorowsky

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I Think The Art

Alejandro Jodorowsky

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I Think The Art Of Filmmaking Is Something You Learn Through Actions, By Doing It, Not By Learning Theories. And As You Do It, Your Mind Starts To Change.

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For Many Years, I Did Pantomime With Marcel Marceau. I Was A Writer For Him And Got To Know Very Well How To Use The Body For Illustration. I Wanted To Do A Mother Without Arms, But Using The Arms Of Her Son In Santa Sangre. The Tragedy Should Always Have Something Funny. Something Weird.

I Believe In Mysticism, With An Interior Goal, And You Are Your Own Temple And Your Own Priest.

For A True Artist, Difficulties Become Opportunities And Clouds Become Solid Present.

Terrorists Are Not Bad; They Are Limited By Circumstances. They Are Human Beings. I Am Very, Very, Very Sad When They Explode Themselves And Kill 40 To 60 Persons. It's Terrible. But Also, I Am Sad For Them, A Young Person Who Lost His Whole Life. It's Terrible. They Are Limited By Religion, By Politics, By Economical Interests.

Art Gives To You A New Conception Of Reality, Opens Your Mind, Opens Your Heart, Opens Your Desire Of Action.

A Man Doesn't Cry. In My Life, I've Never Cried. I Cannot Do It. I Am A Man. How Will I Cry?

I Think Twitter Is The Literature Of The 21st Century. I Think It's An Incredible Art Because When You Make A Book, You Don't Know Who Reads It. But Every Line, I Write A Million People, They Read It, And Then They Insult Me, They Love Me, They Discuss, They Give An Opinion Instantly, Immediately. They Are Completely In Communication, Immediately. That Is A Real Art.

I Don't Regret Any Past. I Am Not There. I Am Not Sorry Not To Make Pictures, Because I Know One Day I Will Do It. I Intend To Live 150 Years.

Every Artist - Even If They Do Superman, They Do Batman, And Things Like That - They Are Speaking About His Life. Every Person, Every Artist Makes His Life An Artwork.

People Say I Am Mad. I Am Not Mad. I Am Trying To Heal My Soul.

Failure Doesn't Mean Anything, It Just Means Changing Paths.

What Is An Artistic Picture? An Artistic Picture Is Very Simple. The Creator Is Not The Producer. The Creator Is Not The Star. The Creator Is The Director, The Person Who Realizes The Picture, Like A Poet, Like An Artist. The Creator Of The Picture Is Free To Do Whatever He Wants, How He Wants To Do It. That Is An Artistic Picture.

Birds Born In A Cage Think Flying Is An Illness.

My Father Was A Monster. A Monster! I Cut With My Family When I Was 23 And I Never See Them Again.

You Can't Have A Masterpiece Without Madness.

What I Am Trying To Do When I Use Symbols Is To Awaken In Your Unconscious Some Reaction. I Am Very Conscious Of What I Am Using Because Symbols Can Be Very Dangerous. When We Use Normal Language We Can Defend Ourselves Because Our Society Is A Linguistic Society, A Semantic Society. But When You Start To Speak, Not With Words, But Only With Images, The People Cannot Defend Themselves.

Don't Make Your Living With Cinema Because Hollywood Will Take You, Will Eat You, Will Destroy You. This Is The Reality. You Have A Good Picture, Have Success, You Take The Person And They Destroy You.

You Are Engaging In Madness. I Feel Obliged To Accompany You.

I Believe In Mysticism, With An Interior Goal, And You Are Your Own Temple And Your Own Priest. I Dont Believe Anymore In Religions, Because You See Today There Are Religious Wars, Prejudice, False Morals, And The Woman Is Despised. Religion Is Too Old Now; Its From Another Century, Its Not For Today.

I Have An Ambition To Live 300 Years. I Will Not Live 300 Years. Maybe I Will Live One Year More. But I Have The Ambition. Why You Will Not Have Ambition? Why? Have The Greatest Ambition Possible. You Want To Be Immortal? Fight To Be Immortal. Do It. You Want To Make The Most Fantastic Art Or Movie? Try. If You Fail, Is Not Important. We Need To Try.

I Am An Artist, You Understand? For Me, A Picture Is Like Poetry. When You Make Art, This Is Not Coming From An Intellectual Place. It's Coming From The Deep Side Of Your Unconscious, Your Soul.

Five Cats And A Woman. That Is All I Need In Life.

I Am Not A Commercial Industry Creator. I Don't Believe In Making Art To Make Money.

I Think The Art Of Filmmaking Is Something You Learn Through Actions, By Doing It, Not By Learning Theories. And As You Do It, Your Mind Starts To Change.

You Are Excrement. You Can Change Yourself Into Gold.

Change Yourself

I Shoot In Mexico, But I Can Shoot In India, Anywhere. I Have No Nationality Myself. My Nationality Is The Planet.

I Was Raping Frank Herbert, But With Love.

I Am Like The Rain, I Go Where I'm Needed.

Birds Born In Cages Think That Flying Is A Disease.

Normality Is To Be Different. Every Person Is A Different Person. And One Day You Need To Be Aware Of Your Difference. Aware That You Are Not The Same As The Others. That Is To Be Normal.

Life Is A Mixing Of All Kind Of Things: Comedy And Tragedy Going Together.

I Wanted To Make A Film That Gave The People Who Took Lsd At That Time The Hallucinations That You Get With That Drug, But Without Hallucinating.

One Becomes Wise Only In Measures, As He Goes Through His Own Insanity.

I Don't See Myself As A Moviemaker Only, You Know? When I Can Do A Picture, I Do. But I Don't Work Like A Business, In Pictures. I Am Not Obliged To Make One Picture After The Other In Order To Live.

One Does Not Go To The Theater To Escape From Himself, But To Reestablish Contact With The Mystery That We All Are.

The World Is How We See The World. Some People See The World Good, The Other People See The World Bad. Every Person Has An Idea Of The World With A Subjective [viewpoint].

For Art To Be Art It Has To Cure.

I Am An Artist. For Me, A Picture Is Like Poetry. When You Make Art, This Is Not Coming From An Intellectual Place. It's Coming From The Deep Side Of Your Unconscious, Your Soul. And You Are Like In Some Kind Of Possession, Where You Are Doing Anything To Get The Visual. You Become Another Person. You're Becoming An Artist In Action. And Then A Lot Of Miracles Come. A Lot Of Discovering. It's A Very Complicated Thing.

The Mole Is An Animal That Digs Passages Searching For The Sun. Sometimes He Reaches The Surface. When He Looks At The Sun He Goes Blind.

Every One Of Us Is A Perfect Human Being, Deformed By The Family, The Society And The Culture.

I Never Know If My Picture Is A Good Picture Or A Bad Picture, Because I'm Not Making Pictures Thinking Of The Public, I'm Making Pictures To Realize Myself.

You Live In The Image You Have Of The World. Every One Of Us Lives In A Different World, With Different Space And Different Time.

I Grew Up In The North Of Chile, And This Is Why There Are A Lot Of Religious Symbols In My Pictures, Because The Catholic Church In Latin America Is Very Strong. If I Was Born In Japan, I Would Speak About Buddhism, But I Was Born In South America.

Movies Have Heart. Have Mind. Have Power. Have Ambition.

I Don't Think Of An Actor. I Think In The Character, And Then I Search For The Actor. Usually I'm Thinking Without Names, Because They Will Change My Idea. No Big Egos. If I Want Egos - Just Mine. That Is Enough.

In Chile They Have No Movies. They Have Awful Popular Movies. I Am Not A Latin American Creator.

My Consciousness Is Without Limits More Than When I Was 40 Or 50.

I Don't Live In France; I Live In Myself.

Awakening Is Not A Thing. It Is Not A Goal, Not A Concept. It Is Not Something To Be Attained. It Is A Metamorphosis. If The Caterpillar Thinks About The Butterfly It Is To Become, Saying ‘and Then I Shall Have Wings And Antennae,’ There Will Never Be A Butterfly. The Caterpillar Must Accept Its Own Disappearance In Its Transformation. When The Marvelous Butterfly Takes Wing, Nothing Of The Caterpillar Remains.

I Want To Liberate My Imagination And My Mind With Every Kind Of Movie. That Is What I Wanted To Do All My Life.

Have A Dream. Fight To Do A Dream. Don't Ask If It Is Possible To Do Something Or If Not Possible. Try To Do It!

I Was Very Scared When I Saw It, Because Dune Was For Me Very Important In My Life. I Was Very Sad I Could Not Do It. When I Saw That David Lynch Would Do It, I Was Very Scared, Because I Admire Him As A Movie-maker, And I Thought He Would Do Well. But When I See The Picture, I Realize He Never Understood This Picture. It's Not A David Lynch Picture. It's The Producer Who Made That Picture, No? Who Made This Horror. For David Lynch, It Was A Job. A Commercial Job. It Never Was That For Me.

The First Thing I Didn't Understand Was My Life. It's A Mystery. And Today I Don't Understand Economy Or Politics. I Don't Know Why Politics Or Economy Are Destroying The World, But I Will Understand After Understanding.

I Am Not A Normal Person. I Am Living In A Normal Body, But My Mind Is Not Normal.

When You Put A Great Amount Of Energy And Hope In A Big Project, You Can Be Destroyed If You Don't Do It. But Myself, I Say: "to Fail Is Only To See The Way To Fail."

Every Mind Has Another Vision Of Reality. There Is Not A Common Reality. Every Person Thinks He Is Like The Others, But Every Person Is Different, Living In His Own Psychology.

My Writing Routine Is Everyday I Put A Record On, The Same One Since 20 Years. Then I Burn A Stick Of Incense, I Put Perfume Here On The Insides Of My Soles, I Paint My Left Testicle Red, And I Write.

The Planet Is Ill, Everyone Knows That. But I Need To Be Optimistic, Otherwise I Would Just Be Adding To The Negativity. So Every Night I Come On Madrid Tv And Read A Piece Of Good News.

One Day, Someone Showed Me A Glass Of Water That Was Half Full. And He Said, "is It Half Full Or Half Empty?" So I Drank The Water. No More Problem.

Maybe If Literature Was Prohibited The Same Way As Cocaine, People Out Of Pure Curiosity Would Try To Get A Couple Of Lines

Most Directors Make Films With Their Eyes; I Make Films With My Testicles.

I Ask Of Cinema What Most North Americans Ask Of Psychedelic Drugs.

If The Picture Is Not An Artistic Picture, It's Show, Like Television. Television Series Are Very Funny, But It's A Collective Production. An Industrial Art. A Car Is Not Made By A Person, It's Made By A Group Of Creators, Only To Go To The Market To Buy Your Cigarettes. That Is A Car - They Are Not A Big Art, They Are A Little Art.

And I Imagine... With Great Pleasure... All The Horrible Stirrings Of The Nonmanifested To Bring Forth The Scream Which Creates The Universe. Maybe One Day I'll See You Trembling, And You'll Go Into Convulsion And Grow Larger And Smaller Until Your Mouth Opens And The World Will Come From Your Mouth, Escaping Through The Window Like A River, And It Will Flood The City. And Then We'll Begin To Live.

Santa Sangre Is The Picture I Love The Best, Myself, Because El Topo And The Holy Mountain I Made With My Head, And Santa Sangre I Made With My Feelings, With My Heart. It's An Emotional Picture. And It's More Real For Me, That Picture.

You Need To Fight In Order To Count. Don't Be Afraid To Believe The Impossible And Then Fight With Yourself To Ameliorate Yourself. Do It. Believe In Yourself. Let A Good Seed Be A Good Seed Now, And Then We'll Have A Good Tree.

If Art Is Not A Medicine For The Society, It Is A Poison.

It's Very Difficult To Live With Religious Ideas. I Can't Compare Religion To The Movies. I Can Fuse Them.

Movies Have An Enormous Power To Open The Mind And The Heart And Everything. You Are Sitting And Seeing Something Moving In Front Of You, And Then Your Mind Goes Into A Trance. You Are Completely There. It's A Real Great Art; It's Not Only A Business. It's To Open The Mind, To Understand This Mystery Within Reality. This Is Why We Need It.

I Write Books, I Write For Comic Books, I Give Lectures... I Live. And When The Opportunity Comes To Do A Picture, I Do A Picture.

If You Are Great, 'el Topo' Is A Great Picture. If You Are Limited, 'el Topo' Is Limited.

I Live Making Comics. Comics Is An Industrial Art But Less Suffering, Because Comics Are For Young People Who Are More Adventurous. I Do That. I Live Off Comics, And Then I Write Books, But When You Want Movies, You Cannot Make Movies Without Money.

When The Bull's-eye Becomes As Big In Your Mind As An Elephant, You Are Sure To Hit It.

I Don't See Myself As A Movie Maker Only. When I Can Do A Picture, I Do. But I Don't Work Like A Business, In Pictures. I Am Not Obliged To Make One Picture After The Other In Order To Live. I Write Books, I Write For Comic Books, I Give Lectures... I Live. And When The Opportunity Comes To Do A Picture, I Do A Picture.

Movies Are Movement. A Comic-book Is Immobility. From One Still Picture To Another, But No Movement. You Need To Make The Movement In Your Head. In The Movies, You See The Movement. It's Different. What Is The Same Is The Mind Of The Creator.

We All Exist In Our Own Personal Reality Of Craziness.

Let The Inner God That Is In Each One Of Us Speak. The Temple Is Your Body, And The Priest Is Your Heart: It Is From Here That Every Awareness Must Begin.

When I Was A Young Person I Went To The University And I Learned A Rational Language, To Think With The Left Side Of The Brain. But In The Right Side Of The Brain You Have Intuition And Imagination. Words Are Not The Truth; They Indicate The Way To Go, But You Need To Go Alone, In Silence. Symbols Have A Language That Kills The Words.

Humanity Are Not Individuals; We Are Collective. And If We Have Difference, We Have Wars All The Time. We Have Crisis. We Need To Open Our Mind. This Is The Only Solution We Have.

The Imagination Wants To Construct The New Worlds, No? Creativity Is A Solution. If I Ask You, "what Is Your Goal In Life? How Many Years Do You Have To Live Before To Die? How Many Years Do You Have? And What You Will Do With These Years You Have?" You Have Pressure There. "how You Will Realize A Good Life? How? Tell Me!" Then, You Start To Open Your Mind.

Words Don't Heal. Art Heals!

Life Is A Way Of Perfection. You Need To Work On Yourself. You Become A Good Person. If You Do Your Work You Will Discover Sublime Feelings.

The Apocalypse Is Now! Americans Know This, That The Only Hope Is The Flying Saucers. Do You Know How I See The World? Like A Person Who Is Dying. It's A Worm Who Is Dying To Make A Butterfly. We Must Not Stop The Worm From Dying, We Must Help The Worm To Die To Help The Butterfly To Be Born. We Need To Dance With Death. This World Is Dying, But Very Well. We Will Make A Big, Big Enormous Butterfly. You And I Will Be The First Movements In The Wings Of The Butterfly Because We Are Speaking Like This.

This Is The Thing: Art Is More Important Than Making A Show, Something That Amuses People. Art Is Something That Needs To Give To The Public, To The Actors, To The Artist - To Give Something That Makes Life The Paradise It Can Be. Life Can Be A Paradise. Still, I Believe That. Even If There Is Trump, There Can Be A Paradise.

I Don't Want To Make A Style. Not Tragedy, Not Comedy. Life Is A Mixing Of All Kind Of Things: Comedy And Tragedy Going Together.

The Only Thing A Master Can Teach Is How To Learn About Yourself. There Are No Secrets. They Are Only Techniques To Waken Yourself.

My Wife Is 37 Years Younger Than Me. I Don't Feel The Difference.

Every Person Has A Talent, But Not The Same One. Every Person Has To Discover His Personal Talent And Go With His Talent. And Then You Are You, And What You Do, You Do Because You Love What You Do, Not Because You Want To Be Famous Or Because You're Making Money. You Do The Work Because You Love It.

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