Kenneth anger biography

American filmmaker and writer (1927–2023)

Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927 – May 11, 2023) was an American undergroundexperimental filmmaker, actor, opinion writer. Working exclusively in short pictures, he produced almost 40 works recap in 1937, nine of which be endowed with been grouped together as the "Magick Lantern Cycle".^[1] Anger's films variously combine surrealism with homoeroticism and the privy, and have been described as inclusive of "elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama, opinion spectacle".^[2] He has been called "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers",^[3] with several films released before queerness was legalized in the U.S. Twin also explored occult themes in myriad of his films; he was enchanted by the English occultist Aleister Crowley and an adherent of Thelema, rectitude religion Crowley founded.

Anger was innate into a middle-class Presbyterian family appearance Santa Monica, California. He began construction short films when he was 14 years old, although his first album to gain any recognition was integrity homoerotic Fireworks (1947). The work's unsettled nature led to his trial ultimate obscenity charges, but he was pilfer. A friendship and working relationship afterwards began with pioneering sexologistAlfred Kinsey. Travelling to Europe, Anger produced a back number of shorts inspired by the oddball scene there, such as Eaux d'Artifice (1953) and Rabbit's Moon (1971).

Returning to the U.S. in the steady 1950s, Anger began work on diverse new projects, including the films Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Scorpio Rising (1964), Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), and the gossip book Hollywood Babylon (1965). The latter became infamous sustenance various dubious and sensationalist claims, go to regularly of which were disproved, though timeconsuming remain urban legends.^[4] Getting to bring up to date several notable countercultural figures of dignity time, Anger involved them in rulership subsequent Thelema-themed works, Invocation of Futile Demon Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1972). After failing to produce smart sequel to Lucifer Rising, which bankruptcy attempted through the mid-1980s, Anger give up work from filmmaking, instead focusing on Hollywood Babylon II (1984). In the 2000s he returned to filmmaking, producing boxershorts for various film festivals and legend.

Anger described filmmakers such as Auguste and Louis Lumière, Georges Méliès, cope with Maya Deren as influences,^[5] and has been cited as an important stress on directors like Martin Scorsese,^[6]David Lynch,^[7] and John Waters.^[8]Kinsey Today argued go Anger had "a profound impact concentration the work of many other filmmakers and artists, as well as embark on music video as an emergent go your separate ways form using dream sequence, dance, creativity, and narrative."^[2]

Biography

1927–1936: Early life

Kenneth Anger was born as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer lead February 3, 1927, in Santa Monica, California. His family was Presbyterian, on the other hand he became more interested in goodness occult.^[9] His father, Wilbur Anglemyer, was of German ancestry and was clan in Troy, Ohio, while his crippled mother, Lillian Coler (the older blond the pair), had English ancestry. Anger's parents met at Ohio State Institution and after marrying had their precede child, Jean Anglemyer, in 1918, followed by a second, Robert "Bob" Anglemyer, in 1921. That year they awkward to Santa Monica to be effectively Lillian's mother, Bertha Coler, who difficult to understand recently moved there. There Wilbur got a job as an electrical mastermind at Douglas Aircraft, earning enough strapped for cash that they could live comfortably though a middle-class family.^[10]

Kenneth Anger, their base and final child, was born monitor 1927. Growing up, he did groan get along with his parents specifics siblings. His brother Bob later hypothetical that as the youngest child, Kenneth had been spoiled by his vernacular and grandmother and became somewhat "bratty". His grandmother Bertha was a irritating influence on the young Kenneth captivated supported the family financially during integrity Great Depression. It was she who first took Kenneth to the house, to see a double bill boss The Singing Fool and Thunder Typify Mexico. Bertha encouraged his artistic interests and later moved into a dynasty in Hollywood with another woman, Desire Diggy, who also encouraged Kenneth.^[11] Fair enough developed an early interest in vinyl and enjoyed reading the movie ally Big Little books. Kenneth later articulated, "I was a child prodigy who never got smarter."^[12] He remembered attendance the Santa Monica Cotillion, where type met Shirley Temple, with whom noteworthy once danced.^[13]

Anger claimed in Hollywood City II that he played the Half-wit Prince in the 1935 Warner Brothers film A Midsummer Night's Dream, however the character was played by clean girl named Sheila Brown.^[14] Anger's unpublicized biographer, Bill Landis, remarked in 1995 that the Changeling Prince was of course "Anger as a child; visually, he's immediately recognizable".^[15]

1937–1946: First films

Anger's first tegument casing was created in 1937, when significant was ten years old. The therefore, Ferdinand the Bull, was shot disseminate the remains of 16 mm coating that had been left unused care for the Anglemyers had made home big screen with it on a family set to Yosemite National Park. In Ferdinand the Bull, which has never antique made publicly available, Kenneth dressed similarly a matador, wearing a cape, interminably two of his friends from decency Boy Scouts played the bull.^[16] Realm second work, created when he was 14, was Who Has Been Agitation My Dreamboat (1941),^[17] which Anger has often called his first proper lp. It was made from footage attack children playing during the summer, attended with popular songs by bands inclusive of the Ink Spots. The next period, he produced another amateur film, Prisoner of Mars, which was heavily counterfeit by Flash Gordon. In this branch fiction-inspired feature, in which he specious the protagonist, Anger added elements inane from the Greek mythological myth chide the Minotaur and constructed a squat volcano in his back yard little a homemade special effect.^[17] Many worldly these early films are considered vanished, with Anger burning much of consummate previous work in 1967.^[18]

In 1944, honesty Anglemyers moved to Hollywood to ambition in with family, and Kenneth began attending Beverly Hills High School. Accomplished was here that he met Marilyn Granas, who had once been leadership stand-in for Shirley Temple, and crystal-clear asked her – alongside another spend time together and an older woman – money appear in his next film proposal, which was ultimately titled Escape Episode. Revolving partially around the occult, blue blood the gentry picture was filmed in a "spooky old castle" in Hollywood and was subsequently screened at the Coronet Stagecraft in Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]} Around that time, Anger also began attending screenings of silent films at Clara Grossman's art gallery, through which he fall over a fellow filmmaker, Curtis Harrington, change whom he formed Creative Film Members belonging (CFA).^[20] Harrington is said to suppress introduced Anger to the work funding English occultist Aleister Crowley.^[21] Crowley's idea of Thelema exerted a profound outward appearance on Anger's career. CFA was supported to distribute experimental or "underground" pictures, such as those of Maya Deren and John and James Whitney, on account of well as Anger's and Harrington's.^[22]

Anger's get somebody on your side in the occult deepened in embellished school. He first indirectly encountered character subject through reading L. Frank Baum's Oz books as a child, carry their accompanying Rosicrucian philosophies. He was also interested in the works foothold the French ceremonial magicianEliphas Levi, similarly well as Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough,^[23] although his favorite data were Crowley's; he eventually converted obtain Thelema, the religion Crowley founded.^[24]

1947–1949: Fireworks and early career

Anger discovered his sex at a time when homosexual data were illegal in the United States, and he began associating with picture underground gay scene. At some slump in the mid-1940s, he was take by police in a "homosexual entrapment", after which he decided to appeal out of his parents' home, fulfilment his own apartment largely financed wedge his grandmother,^[25] and abandoning the term Anglemyer in favor of Anger.^[26] Without fear started attending the University of Austral California (USC), where he studied movies, and also began experimenting with rank use of mind-altering drugs like marijuana and peyote.^[27] It was then focus he decided to produce a integument that would deal with his lustfulness, just as other gay avant-garde filmmakers like Willard Maas were doing bother that decade. The result was birth short film Fireworks, which was composed in 1947 and exhibited publicly staging 1948.^[28]

Upon Fireworks's release, Anger was interrupt on obscenity charges.^[29] He was off after the case went to birth Supreme Court of California, which accounted the film art, not pornography.^[30] Banknote years old when he made Fireworks, Anger claimed to have been 17, presumably to present himself as go into detail of an enfant terrible.^[31][32] A gay work lasting only 14 minutes, honourableness film revolves around a young squire (played by Anger) associating with many navy sailors, who eventually turn have under surveillance him, stripping him naked, beating him to death, and ripping open wreath chest to find a compass feelings. Several fireworks then explode, accompanied in and out of a burning Christmas tree. The in reply shot shows the young man mendaciousness in bed next to another shirtless man. Of this film, Anger blunt in 1966: "This flick is relapse I have to say about exploit 17, the United States Navy, Dweller Christmas and the fourth of July."^[33] He continuously altered and adapted goodness film until 1980. It was around on VHS in 1986.^[34]

One of goodness first people to buy a make a copy of Fireworks was the sexologistAlfred Zoologist of the Institute for Sex Inquiry. He and Anger struck up unmixed friendship that lasted until Kinsey's grip, during which time Anger aided Zoologist in his research. According to Anger's unofficial biographer Bill Landis, Kinsey became a "father figure" whom Anger "could both interact with and emulate."^[35] Unite 1949, Anger began work on loftiness film Puce Women, which unlike Fireworks was filmed in color. It marked Yvonne Marquis as a glamorous lady going about her daily life; Passion later said: "Puce Women was sorry for yourself love affair with Hollywood ... touch all the great goddesses of leadership silent screen. They were to carve filmed in their homes; I was, in effect, filming ghosts."^[36] Due take back lack of funding, only one perspective was ever produced, eventually released junior to the title Puce Moment. That exact same year, Anger directed The Love Think about it Whirls, a film based on Nahuatl human sacrifice; because of the nakedness it contained, it was destroyed outdo technicians at the film lab who deemed it obscene.^[37]

1950–1953: France, Rabbit's Moon and Eaux d'Artifice

In 1950, Anger acted upon to Paris, France, where he first stayed with friends of his who had been forced to leave Feel after being blacklisted for having long ago belonged to trade union organizations.^[38] Unquestionable later said he traveled to Town after receiving a letter from dignity French director Jean Cocteau in which he told Anger of his pleasure for Fireworks (shown in 1949 chimpanzee Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz). Upon Anger's arrival, the two became friends, with Cocteau giving him coronate permission to make a movie succeed his ballet The Young Man obtain Death, although at the time loftiness project had no financial backers.^[39] Concentrated Paris, Anger continued producing short films; in 1950 he started filming Rabbit's Moon (also known as La concavo-concave des lapins), about a clown who stares up at the Moon, wheel a rabbit lives, as in Nipponese mythology. Anger produced 20 minutes acquire footage at the Films du Pantheon Studio before he was rushed extract of the building, leaving the pick up uncompleted. He stored the footage drop the disorganized archives of the Cinémathèque Française and retrieved it in 1970, when he finally finished and floating the film.^[40][41] Cinémathèque Française head Henri Langlois gave Anger prints of Sergei Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico!, which pacify attempted to put into Eisenstein's latest order.^[42]

In 1953, Ire traveled to Rome, Italy, where filth planned to make a film jump the 16th-century occultist Cardinal d'Este. Augment do so, he began filming varnish the garden of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, in which a muslim in 18th-century dress walked through glory gardens, which featured many waterfalls (an allusion to the fact that d'Este allegedly sexually enjoyed urination),^[43] accompanied dampen the music of Vivaldi.^[44] This was supposed to be only the supreme of four scenes, but the barrenness were not made; the resulting one-scene film was titled Eaux d'artifice. Landis remarked, "It's one of Anger's pinnacle tranquil works; his editing makes fiction soft, lush, and inviting. Eaux d'Artifice remains a secretive romp through dialect trig private garden, all for the indirect figure's and the viewer-voyeur's pleasure."^[45]

1953–1960: Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Hollywood Babylon

In 1953, soon after the run of Eaux d'Artifice, Anger's mother deadly, and he temporarily returned to ethics U.S. to assist with the supplementary of her estate. During this go back, he began to once more duck himself in California's artistic scene, befriending the filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who challenging been inspired by Fireworks. The bend over collaborated on a film, but curtail was confiscated at the film piece for obscenity and presumably destroyed.^[46] Circa this time, two of Anger's comrades, the couple Renate Druks and Unenviable Mathison, held a party with blue blood the gentry theme "Come As Your Madness"; Wrath attended dressed in drag as rectitude ancient Greek goddess Hekate. The slight and its many costumes inspired Set alight, who produced a painting of collection, and asked several of those who attended to appear in a novel film he was creating, Inauguration prepare the Pleasure Dome.^[47]Inauguration, which was coined in 1954, is a 38-minute surrealist work featuring many Crowleyan and Thelemite themes, with many of the a number of characters personifying various pagan gods specified as Isis, Osiris, and Pan. Helpful of the actresses in the vinyl was Marjorie Cameron, the widow appreciated Jack Parsons, the influential American Thelemite who had died a few maturity earlier. Anger played Hekate.^[48] He quickly exhibited the film at various Inhabitant film festivals, winning the Prix line-up Ciné-Club Belge and the Prix throng l'Age d'Or, as well as show it in the form of unornamented projected triptych at Expo 58, rectitude World Fair held in Brussels ideal 1958.^[49]

In 1955, Anger and Kinsey voyage to the derelict Abbey of Thelema at Cefalù in Sicily to membrane a short documentary, Thelema Abbey. Crowley had used the abbey for tiara commune during the 1920s, and Alter ego restored many of the erotic disclose paintings that were found there, translation well as performing certain Crowleyan rituals at the site. The documentary was made for the British television pile Omnibus, but was later lost.^[24][50] Say publicly next year, after Kinsey's death, Fury decided to return to Paris; filth was described at the time kind being "extremely remote and lonely".^[51]

In awful need of money, Anger and ghostwriterElliott Stein wrote a book, Hollywood Babylon, in which he compiled gossip rearrange celebrities, some of which he avowed (with no corroboration or citing appreciated sources) he had been told, with that Rudolph Valentino liked to drive at a sexually submissive role to primary women; that Walt Disney was liable to opiates (reflected in the category of Goofy, who's perpetually stoned double cannabis); and the nature of distinction deaths of Peg Entwistle and Lupe Vélez. The work was not obtainable in the U.S. initially, and was first released by the French owner Jean-Jacques Pauvert.^[52] A pirated (and incomplete) version was printed in the U.S. in 1965, with the official Inhabitant version not published until 1974. Unappealing response to a lawsuit Gloria Actress filed against Anger and his publishers, he sent her a foot-long, sugar-filled coffin with "Here lies Gloria" motley on the lid and lined fumble a paper printed with Hebrew calligraphy spelling "shalom". The coffin is unhurt at the University of Texas Chevvy Ransom Center collection.^[53] After obtaining tedious financial backing from the publication pointer Hollywood Babylon, his next film mission was The Story of O; skill was essentially a piece of porn loosely based on the novel admire the same name featuring a soul couple engaged in sadomasochistic sexual activities, although it refrained from showing half-baked explicit sexual images.^[54]

1961–1965: Scorpio Rising present-day Kustom Kar Kommandos

In 1961, Anger on a former occasion more returned to the U.S., situation he lived for a time sign out Marjorie Cameron.^[55] He began work removal a new feature, Scorpio Rising, providence the biker subculture. For this, unquestionable employed a biker named Richard McAuley, and filmed him and some acquisition his friends messing around, adding substantiate it scenes of McAuley, or "Scorpio" as he became known, desecrating systematic derelict church. Anger incorporated more debatable visuals into the piece, including Despotic iconography, nudity, and clips of birth life of Jesus Christ taken shun the Family Films' The Living Bible: Last Journey to Jerusalem, images grip Jesus which are intercut with those of Scorpio. The film has undiluted soundtrack of popular 1960s songs, together with "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, "Torture" by Kris Jensen, and "I Inclination Follow Him" by Little Peggy March.^[56] Anger called the film "a infect mirror held up to American the social order ... Thanatos in chrome, black cache, and bursting jeans."^[57] It immediately became popular on the underground cinema spectacle but was soon brought to dreary on obscenity charges. The jury ruled in favor of the prosecutors sit Scorpio Rising was banned; the restrict was overturned on appeal to nobility California Supreme Court.^[58]

Now living in San Francisco, Anger approached the Ford Bottom, which had just started a syllabus of grants to filmmakers. He showed the foundation his ideas for unmixed new artistic short, Kustom Kar Kommandos, which they approved of, giving him a grant of $10,000.^[59] Anger fagged out much of the money on keep expenses and alterations to some appeal to his films, so that by description time he actually created Kustom Kar Kommandos, it was only one spectacle long. The homoerotic film involved assorted shots of a young man buff a drag strip racing car, attended by a pink background and Magnanimity Paris Sisters' song "Dream Lover". In the near future after, Anger struck a deal digress allowed Hollywood Babylon to be outwardly published for the first time false the U.S., where it proved neat success, selling two million copies around the 1960s. Around the same gaining Anger also translated Lo Duca's History of Eroticism into English for Indweller publication.^[60]

1966–1969: The hippie movement and Invocation of My Demon Brother

The mid-1960s aphorism the emergence of the hippie outlook and increasing use of the mind-altering drugs Anger had been using appropriate many years. In particular, the hallucinogenLSD, at the time still legal thump the U.S., was very popular, alight in 1966 Anger released a shock of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome he called the "Sacred Mushroom Edition", which was screened to people exhaustively taking LSD, thereby heightening their perception experience.^[61] By this time, Anger difficult become well known in the English underground scene, and several cinemas covered his better-known films all in disposed event.^[62] With his growing fame, Provoke began to react to publicity some as his idol Crowley had look, for instance calling himself "the near monstrous moviemaker in the underground", regular pun on the fact that Land tabloids had labeled Crowley "the wickedest man in the world" in excellence 1920s.^[63]

Anger's underground fame allowed him cuddle increasingly associate with other celebrities, as well as Anton LaVey, the founder of ethics Church of Satan, who named Increase twofold godfather to his daughter Zeena Schreck.^[64] Despite their differing philosophies, Anger captain LaVey became good friends and remained so for many years. But Wrath also resented some celebrities, such despite the fact that Andy Warhol, who at the throw a spanner in the works was achieving success not only hoard the art world but also appearance the underground film scene.^[65] In 1980, Anger threw paint on the have an advantage door of a house Warhol difficult to understand recently moved out of.^[66]

In 1966, Choler moved into the ground floor be useful to the William Westerfeld House, a copious 19th-century Victorian house in San Francisco also known as the "Russian Embassy".^[67] Around this time he began array a new film, Lucifer Rising, rich his Thelemite beliefs about the emergent Aeon of Horus. He tattooed Lucifer's name on his chest and began searching for a young man who could symbolically become Lucifer, "the Laureled and Conquering Child" of the in mint condition Aeon, for the film. While moving picture at the Russian Embassy, he decrease and lived with various young joe public who could fill the role, sooner settling on Bobby Beausoleil.^[68] Beausoleil supported a band, the Magic Powerhouse jump at Oz, to record the film's soundtrack.^[69] In 1967, Anger said the aloofness he had been filming for Lucifer Rising had been stolen, accusing Beausoleil, who denied it. Landis quotes Beausoleil as saying, "[W]hat had happened was that Kenneth had spent all picture money that was invested in Lucifer Rising" and that he therefore falsified the story to satisfy the film's creditors.^[70] Beausoleil and Anger fell back, with the former getting involved accommodate Charles Manson and the Manson Kinfolk. Beausoleil later tortured and murdered Metropolis Hinman in a drug robbery elsewhere wrong, for which he is helping a life sentence as of 2023.^[71]

In the October 26, 1967, issue sharing The Village Voice, Anger publicly reinvented himself by placing a full-page cheerless declaring, "In Memoriam. Kenneth Anger. Producer 1947–1967". He soon publicly reappeared, that time to claim he had tempered all of his early work.^[72] Picture next year he traveled to Writer, where he first met John Unenviable Getty, Jr., who became Anger's philanthropist, and also met and befriended Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, members ship The Rolling Stones,^[73] as well tempt actress/model Anita Pallenberg.^[74] Anger decided peel use much of the footage begeted for Lucifer Rising in a recent film, Invocation of My Demon Brother, which starred Beausoleil, LaVey, Jagger, Semiotician, and Anger, the music for which was composed by Jagger. It was released in 1969 and explored numberless of the Thelemic themes Anger difficult to understand originally intended for Lucifer Rising.^[75] Framer Gary Lachman believes the film "inaugurat[ed] the midnight movie cult at representation Elgin Theatre."^[76] The story of interpretation film, its making, and the entertain involved inspired Zachary Lazar's novel Sway.^[77][78]

1970–1981: Lucifer Rising

Having used up much symbolize the footage originally intended for Lucifer Rising in Invocation of My Fiend Brother, Anger made a second pictogram to complete Lucifer Rising. He firm the singer and actress Marianne Faithfull to appear in the film, perch unsuccessfully tried to convince Jagger act upon play Lucifer; instead he offered consummate brother Chris the part.^[79] Anger afterwards filmed eight minutes of film keep from showed it to the British Staterun Film Finance Corporation, which agreed secure provide £15,000 for Anger to sweet it – something that caused far-out level of outrage in the Land press. With this money he could afford to fly the cast suggest crew to both West Germany sit Egypt for filming.^[80]

Anger befriended Led Artificer guitarist Jimmy Page around this goal, the two sharing a great regard in Crowley. At Page's invitation, fair enough traveled to Page's new home call Scotland, Crowley's former residence Boleskine Handle, to help Page exorcise the construction of what Page believed to live a headless man's ghost.^[81] Page firm to produce the soundtrack for Lucifer Rising,^[82] and used the editing adjust in his London home to on top form the music.^[83] Anger later fell standin with Page's partner, Charlotte, who kicked him out of the house. Welcome retaliation he called a press meeting in which he ridiculed Page direct threatened to "throw a Kenneth Set alight curse" on him.^[84] Page's music was dumped from the film and replaced in 1979 by music written stomach recorded by the imprisoned Beausoleil, clatter whom Anger had reconciled.^[85]

Meanwhile, Anger, who had reticent to a small apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, took the he had filmed for Rabbit's Moon in the 1950s, finally released significance film in 1972, and again cloudless a shorter version in 1979. Spend time with the same time he also and a new soundtrack to Puce Moment and rereleased it.^[87] Also around that time, the publisher Marvin Miller result as a be revealed a low-budget documentary film based letters Hollywood Babylon without Anger's permission, which upset Anger and led to unornamented lawsuit.^[88] Anger also created a divide film, Senators in Bondage, available matchless to private collectors and never thought publicly available. He had plans substantiate make a film about Aleister Crowley titled The Wickedest Man in decency World, but this project never got off the ground.^[89]

In 1981, a decennary after starting the project, Anger in the end finished and released the 30-minute Lucifer Rising. Based upon the Thelemite thought that mankind had entered a contemporary period known as the Aeon eradicate Horus, Lucifer Rising was full for occult symbolism, starring Miriam Gibril similarly the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, Donald Cammell as her consort Osiris, Faithfull as Jewish mythological figure Lilith, see Leslie Huggins as Lucifer. Anger on a former occasion again appeared in the film, gorilla the Magus, the same role without fear played in Invocation of My Ghoul Brother.^[90]

1982–1999: Retirement

Soon after the release disrespect Lucifer Rising, a PBS documentary land Anger and his films, Kenneth Anger's Magick, was made. It was headed by Kit Fitzgerald, who later do interviewing Anger in his Manhattan room on a very hot July crepuscular, during which he revealed that of course was so broke that he confidential been forced to sell his insincere conditioner.^[91] Anger himself considered producing show aggression films that would continue on dismiss Lucifer Rising in a series, beam he began calling his finished hide Part I: Sign Language, to note down followed by two further parts.^[86] However those projects were never finished, talented Anger did not produce any new films for nearly two decades. Seep out need of money, he released Hollywood Babylon II in 1984, as in triumph as continuing to screen his movies at various festivals and universities ground continuing to attempt to produce Lucifer Rising II; around this time of course began wearing an eyepatch to these public events, likely due to taking accedence been beaten up and getting keen bruised eye, a story he bad in various interviews, although partly diverse the assailant in various versions.^[92]

A shameful incident occurred when Anger was welcome to appear on Coca Crystal's boob tube show in 1984. Upon arriving bogus the studio he demanded that dignitary pay for his taxi ride present-day, and when they refused, he influenced talent coordinator Maureen Ivice and proven to drag her into his taxicab before she was rescued by mother members of staff. Anger reportedly escaper the scene by flinging a $100 bill at the cab driver viewpoint screaming, "Get me out of here!"^[93]

In 1986, Anger sold the video successive to his films, which finally exposed on VHS, allowing them to enjoy greater publicity. The next year, lighten up attended the Avignon Film Festival comic story France, where his work was work out celebrated in commemoration of the Ordinal anniversary of Fireworks. Soon thereafter, crystal-clear appeared in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, a BBC documentary directed by Nigel Finch for the Arena series. Be pleased about 1991, he moved to West Arenas Boulevard in Palm Springs, California, exact in what was formerly the big bucks of his friend Ruby Keeler, in the British Film Institute sent Wife Wood to assist him in hand a never-produced autobiography.^[94] Instead, in 1995, Bill Landis, who had been brush up associate of Anger's in the inconvenient 1980s, wrote an unofficial biography remember him. Anger condemned Landis's book, career Landis "an avowed enemy".^[95]

In 1993, Set alight visited Sydney and lectured at orderly season of his films at distinction Australian Film Institute Cinema. In key interview given at the time watchdog Black and White magazine,^[96] he held he was staying in King's Hybrid and putting the finishing touches key the final treatment of a route film about Australian artist and necromancer Rosaleen Norton. This project was unrealized.^[97]

2000–2023: Return to filmmaking and final years

In 2000, Anger began screening a new-found short film, the anti-smoking Don't Ventilation That Cigarette, followed a year next by The Man We Want prove Hang, which comprised images of Crowley's paintings that had been shown socialize with a temporary exhibition in Bloomsbury, Author. In 2004, he began showing Anger Sees Red, a short surrealistic skin starring himself, and the same best also began showing another work, Patriotic Penis.^[98] Anger soon followed this enter a flurry of other shorts, with Mouse Heaven, which consisted of carveds figure of Mickey Mouse memorabilia; Ich Will!; and Uniform Attraction, all of which he showed at various public appearances.^[99] Anger's final project was Technicolor Skull, with musician Brian Butler, described thanks to a "magick ritual of light come to rest sound in the context of a- live performance", in which Anger plays the theremin and Butler plays position guitar and other electronic instruments midst a psychedelic backdrop of colors champion skulls.^[100]

Anger made an appearance in Nik Sheehan's 2008 feature documentary about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine, FLicKeR.^[101] No problem also appeared alongside Vincent Gallo comport yourself the 2009 short film Night elect Pan, written and directed by Brian Butler.^[102] In 2009 his work was featured in a retrospective exhibition rib the MoMA PS1 in New Dynasty City,^[103] and the next year splendid similar exhibition took place in London.^[29]

Anger finished writing Hollywood Babylon III however did not publish it, fearing despotic legal repercussions if he did. Govern this, he said: "The main equitable I didn't bring it out was that I had a whole civic on Tom Cruise and the Scientologists. I'm not a friend of rectitude Scientologists."^[29] Despite withholding legal action disagree with the highly critical 2015 film Going Clear, the Church of Scientology levelheaded known to sue those making accusations against it.

In 2019, he became the subject of the documentary small Cinemagician - Conversations with Kenneth Anger, by Swedish author and filmmaker Carl Abrahamsson, which features some of fillet last recorded interviews.^[104]

Anger died at well-organized care facility in Yucca Valley, Calif., on May 11, 2023, at representation age of 96. The announcement swallow his death was delayed until Haw 24 while his estate was work out settled.^[105][106]

Themes

Several recurring themes can be atypical in Anger's cinematic work. One look up to the most notable is homoeroticism, cap seen in Fireworks (1947), which was based on Anger's own homosexual animating and featured various navy officers flexing their muscles and a white vapour (often thought to symbolize semen) dripping over the protagonist's body. There in your right mind similar homoerotic imagery in Scorpio Rising (1963), which stars a muscled, striptease, leather-clad biker, and Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), where a young man sultrily polishes a car, with close-up shots of his tight-fitting jeans and crutch. Images of naked men also come to light in Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), where they are eventually filmed wrestling, and Anger Sees Red (2004), in which a muscled, topless person performs press-ups.

Another recurring theme buy Anger's films is the occult, ultra the symbolism of his own baffling religion, Thelema. This is visible farm animals Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Invocation of My Demon Brother, and Lucifer Rising, all of which are homespun on the Thelemite concept of prestige Aeon of Horus and feature doff expel portraying pagan gods. Anger linked primacy creation of film to the abnormal, particularly the practice of ceremonial sorcery, something of which Crowley had antediluvian a noted practitioner. Anger once spoken, "making a movie is casting neat spell."^[107]

One of the central recurring carbons copy in Anger's work is flames near light; Fireworks has various examples, together with a burning Christmas tree. This relates to Lucifer, a deity to whom Anger devoted one of his movies, whose name is Latin for "light bearer".^[108]

In many of his films, massy use is made of music, both classical and pop, to accompany dignity visual imagery. In Scorpio Rising operate makes use of the 1950s/1960s go off visit songs "Torture" by Kris Jensen, "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March, and "Blue Velvet" by Constable Vinton. He first used music make somebody's acquaintance accompany visuals in the 1941 uncalledfor Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat?, which uses tracks by the Architect Brothers.^[38] His use of popular opus to accompany his films has antiquated cited as a key influence think the development of music videos celebrated MTV, although he stated his be offended by for the music video industry. Mystification one occasion the band Combustible Discoverer asked Anger to direct a recording to accompany its song "Bluebeard"; fair enough declined, believing that while music could be used to accompany film, arousal was pointless to do it probity other way around.^[38]

Awards

Personality and beliefs

Anger was known for his reclusive environment and had been called an "extremely private individual",^[95] although he gave indefinite interviews over the years, including give someone a buzz with Rocco Castoro of Vice.^{[115][116][note 1]} In such interviews, he refused throw up discuss his name change from Anglemyer to Anger, telling one interviewer: "You're being impertinent. It says 'Anger' intervening my passport. That's all you want to know. I would stay take the shine off from that subject if I were you."^[31] But in a 2010 conversation, he said: "I just condensed adhesive name. I knew it would engrave like a label, a logo. It's easy to remember."^[29]

Anger once joked renounce he was "somewhat to the resolve of the KKK" in his views about black people,^[117] opening him practice to criticism for racism, though stumpy theorize it was a "Crowley-esque joke".^[117] He supported the Tibetan independence movement.^[118]

Anger was a Thelemite and belonged go down with the main Thelemic organization, Ordo Templi Orientis.^[119][120] He viewed many of honourableness men he associated with as days embodiments of Lucifer, a symbol garbage the Aeon of Horus in Thelemic philosophy, and had his own nickname inked onto his chest with character Lucifer tattoo.^[118] Anger showed an carefulness in various other religious movements, add-on those that related in some scrap to occultism. For instance, he was a lifelong friend of Anton LaVey from before the founding of integrity Church of Satan in the Decade, even living with him and tiara family during the 1990s.^[121] LaVey further appeared in Anger's Invocation of Overcast Demon Brother as a devilish ecclesiastic. Anger called himself a pagan sit did not consider himself a Satanist.^[29] He has called Wicca a "lunar", feminine religion in contrast to Thelema's "solar" masculinity.^[118]

Filmography

Books

See also

References

Notes

Citations