A force to be reckoned with in the history of independent film, Kenneth
Anger finds his energy in the broadest of pop cultural associations—from
the sexual fantasies of sailor boys, bikers, and queer macho to the
magical forces of nature and the divine. His earliest cinematic visions
were fueled by visions of celebrity, sprung out of a youthful imagination
under the influence Hollywood glamour.
Author of Hollywood Babylon, a notorious encyclopedia of gossip about
stars’ sex lives, his cinema draws from popular culture to create its own
mythology. One of his most well-known films, Scorpio Rising (1964), is,
in his own words, “a death mirror held up to American culture,” and
binds together Brando, Hitler and Christ. A subversive dream-like
collage that is nonetheless narratively driven, the film is at the same
time erotic, sublime, and bitingly critical—a story of glorious self-destruction.
His editing strategies speak the otherwise unspoken, and
bring to the surface the allusions to sex and death that ground even the
most banal artifacts of our culture, such as popular music.
For the uninitiated, Anger Me features generous excerpts from Anger’s
life works and places Anger in context among his peers in experimental
art and film while reminding us of his often overlooked encounters with
other film luminaries such as D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, and Jean
Cocteau. Tracing Anger’s legacy and his role in shaping the countercultural
revolution of the sixties, director Elio Gelmini frames Anger as
an avant-garde mystic still entranced by the lush spectacles of early
Hollywood. With Anger narrating his own life and work, Gelmini’s Anger
Me almost serves as a filmed autobiography of this extremely private
auteur.
A self-proclaimed ‘independent” his films are darkly erotic and
perversely joyous. Anger, a film poet who draws from the language of
surrealism and who understands movies as magic steadily migrated
away from Hollywood toward the creation of a fascinating and personal
language of film that paved the way for more recent developments in
queer cinema.
Preceded by
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Scorpio Rising, Dir. by Kenneth Anger, US, 1964, 30 min,
originally shot on 16mm. The macho world of bikers, full of phallic
symbols in chrome mixes with images of the occult, Christian deities and
Nazi’s set to a pop soundtrack. |
Fireworks, Dir. by Kenneth Anger ,US, 1947, 14 min,
originally shot on 16mm. 60th Anniversary screening. A young man
awakens in a daze, only to follow the bright light that calls to him. A
violent homoerotic episode ensues when he meets a gang of sadistic
sailors.
Total duration:117 min
Colony Theatre
Career Synopsis
Elio Gelmini was born in 1959 in Caserta, Italy. After studying Acting
and Documentary Film Studies and working as an actor in theatre in
Italy, he immigrated to Canada in 1989. Anger Me is his first theatrical
feature film.
Kenneth Anger born in Santa Monica, California, began his career in
film as a child in the 1935 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. His
films include Fireworks (1947), Puce Moment (1949), Rabbits Moon (1950), Eaux d’artifice (1953), Inaguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954),
Scorpio Rising (1964), Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), Invocation of My
Demon Brother (1969), Lucifer Rising (1972), Don’t Smoke that Cigarette (2000), The Man We Want To Hang (2002), and Mouse Haven (2004).
He gained wide acclaim with his books Hollywood Babylon and
Hollywood Babylon 2. In 2002 he received an Honorary Doctorate in
Humane Letters from the Pasadena Art Center College of Design.
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