The quest and initiation

The hero sets out to find an object or an answer and discovers on the way that he was looking for something else: it is the oldest structure of storytelling, and the most travelled. Attar sends thirty birds towards a distant king, Chrétien de Troyes launches a naive young man on the road to the Grail, Hesse leads a brahmin's son to the bank of a river, Voltaire sends an optimist round the world. Cinema draws journeys of another order from it: a ship towards Jupiter, a forbidden zone crossed in silence, a desert crossed on camelback.

works 11

• PoetryShahnameh: The Persian Book of KingsشاهنامهFerdowsi · 1010The kings and heroes of ancient Iran sung in a Persian almost free of Arabic words.Literature
• PoetryThe Conference of the Birdsمنطق‌الطیرAttar of Nishapur · 1177A pilgrimage of birds towards their hidden king, an allegory of the soul's path to God.Literature
• NovelPerceval, the Story of the GrailPercevalChrétien de Troyes · 1180A young Welshman, ignorant of everything, becomes a knight and passes by the mystery of the grail without understanding it.Literature
• NovelCandideVoltaire · 1759A boy raised in the belief that nothing could be better goes through all the misfortunes of the age.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelHenry von OfterdingenHeinrich von OfterdingenNovalis · 1802A novel of apprenticeship from early German Romanticism, left unfinished, in which a boy sets out on the roads of the Middle Ages after dreaming of a flower.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelSiddharthaHermann Hesse · 1922India in the sixth century before our era, where a Brahmin's son seeks his own path.Literature
• CinemaThe Wizard of OzVictor Fleming · 1939The success of Blanche-Neige two years earlier had shown that a children's tale could succeed in the cinema; the film passes from sepia to colour when Dorothy opens the door.Cinema
• CinemaLawrence of ArabiaDavid Lean · 1962An English officer crosses a desert that no one crosses, and the country he rouses is not his own.Cinema
• Cinema8½Federico Fellini · 1963A filmmaker with no inspiration loses himself among his memories, his dreams and the people around him.Cinema
• Cinema2001: A Space OdysseyStanley Kubrick · 1968Conceived to escape the monster films of the time, with the help of experts from the American space agency, the film has no spoken word for about twenty minutes.Cinema
• CinemaStalkerСталкерAndrei Tarkovsky · 1979A film from 1979 in which a guide leads two men through a forbidden zone to a place where wishes are said to be granted.Cinema