Roland Topor

Roland Topor (January 7th 1938 with Paris - April 16th 1997 with Paris), is a Illustrateur, Dessinateur, painter, writer and Cinéaste French.

Biography

He spends his first years to Paris, in the 10 {{E}} district, street Corbeau (today Rue Jacques-Louvel-Tessier), then in Savoy where his/her parents, immigrant Jewish Polish, hide of the occupant Nazi.

Studying with the School of the fine arts of Paris, he collaborated in the newspaper Hara-Kiri of which he shared the worship of humor black, pickling solution and cynical but also, in a pinker vein, with the magazine She . He was one of the creators in 1962 of the movement Panique with Fernando Arrabal, Olivier O. Olivier, Alexandro Jodorowsky and Jacques Sternberg.

In collaboration with Rene Laloux, it was attracted by the cinema of animation. After several short films, the feature film the wild Planet obtained in 1973 the special price of the jury with Cannes. It held some secondary roles with the cinema ( Those which one did not have Pascal Thomas, the satin Spider etc). Its service of actor reaches excellence in film of Werner Herzog Nosferatu, phantom of the night at the sides of Isabelle Adjani and Klaus Kinski.

Roland Topor carried out also many posters, quote ( the Drum of Volker Schlöndorff), the Empire of passion of Oshima, the red Ibis of Jean-Pierre Mocky. Decade 70 also sees its novel the chimerical Tenant knowing a brilliant adaptation to the cinema by Roman Polanski (the film is regarded as one of its best). It should be noted that he collaborated with Federico Fellini for his Casanova : Roland Topor drew there the images at the time of the sequence of the " lantern magique".

Roland Topor will work with his friend and accessory Jean-Michel Ribes on many projects. They will write together for television Merci Bernard (1982-1984), then Palace (1988); for the theater Battles (1983.) ; for the cinema the Wafer of the king (1985); as well as other new writings to date, like Kignorje or the Cabbage of the scholar . Topor will also work for television with Téléchat , an emission for children started in 1983, realized by his/her close friend, the Belgian Henri Xhonneux. Immediate success of this last series: 234 episodes transfer the day. With grain-hair is the title of the book left in 1987 Co-writing with Henri Xhonneux. He reports the round the world tour which Groucha (main character of Téléchat ) in 80 days carries out.

It is with Henri Xhonneux that Topor undertakes an adaptation of the life of the marquis de Sade in 1988, presented to the public the following year, at the time of the celebration of the bicentenary of the French revolution. The work, only interpreted by actors in masks representing of the animals ( Marquis ) disconcerted and the critic… and the spectators. Helping time, Marquis became a film worship today.

Author of original and powerful theater - Vinci had reason (part which started an immense scandal in Belgium during its creation), Joko celebrates its birthday , Ambiguous the or the Winter under the table -, it worked several times with his friend Jerome Savary ( Adventures of Zartan , Of Brace with Mao ) and signed in 1992 at the same time the setting in scene, the decorations and the costumes of Ubu king with the National theater of Chaillot, in Paris.

Deceased at the hospital after a cardiovascular accident in his Parisian residence, Roland Topor is buried with the Cimetière of Montparnasse, in the 14th division, in edge of the avenue of North. Its tomb is with two steps of that of Paul Deschanel, president of (IIIe) the French Republic remained famous for some mislayings… It is not very distant either from the tombs of Tristan Tzara and Charles Baudelaire. A vicinity which would have surely rained with this amateur of scouring humor and resolutely nonconformist.

The Editions Buchet-Chastel (Paris) published the first biography of Roland Topor in March 2007, signed by the journalist Frantz Vaillant.

Its work

It was one of the protagonists of the radio program “Of Papous in the head” of France Culture.

Throughout its life, there published good numbers of books and collections of news, often remained confidential. However, Roman Polanski drew from it the Tenant , in 1976.

Megumi Satsu, eccentric Japanese singer, http://megumisatsu.com/ sang " I aime" song written by Roland Topor.

An attaching character of Topor is max Lampin, the universal scapegoat .

A revealing quotation on the motivations of this touch-with-all, in Memories of a schmuck :

Humanity needs sublime.

sublimates It the sublime one, it is Article

sublimates It art, it is the avant-garde.

Or this extract of the work Cribs :

…

I want that my

existence Is a supreme offense

With the vultures which impatientent

Since the Forties

By illustrating without complex

blood, the shit and the sex.

Reception and reception

Roland Topor leaves a plentiful, original work (and often brilliant) whose time did not blunt virulence. He became, on a purely posthumous basis, satrap of the Collège of' Pataphysique.

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