Avant-garde filmmaker and author Kenneth Anger, has died.
Anger’s death was announced today by the Sprüeth Magers art gallery.
Kenneth was a trailblazer.
His cinematic genius and influence will live on and continue to transform all those who encounter his films, words and vision.”
Anger’s work spanned 1941 to 2013 and yet totaled just eight hours in 36 dialogue-free short films. Among them;
- Fireworks (1947), which was filmed when he was a teenager in his parents’ home while they were at an uncle’s funeral, chronicled a gang rape by sailors, with a blood-splattered Anger in the lead.
- Scorpio Rising (1963), a pastiche of pop songs plastered over homoerotic biker imagery, pulp cartoons, Nazism and paraphernalia.
- Eaux d’Artifice (1953), a 13-minute film inducted in 1993 for the fifth class of honorees.
- He also directed, shot, edited and starred in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) opposite occultists Samson De Brier and Marjorie Cameron.
- His Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) was scored by Mick Jagger on a Moog synthesizer over footage of a satanic funeral ceremony.
- Lucifer Rising, 1967 was later completed in 1972 before
In 1959, Anger authored the exploitative classic Hollywood Babylon that was banned after its U.S release in 1965 and followed it up with a sequel in, Hollywood Bablyon 2 in 1984.
In the mid 80s, I hosted a night (fittingly, in retrospect) called Straight To Hell at the Pyramid in NYC’s East Village which was a magazine in celebration of homoerotic true stories that my late friend Victor Weaver edited. (I was on the cover of one.)
The first weeks of Sunday nights were a sort of an underground Who’s Who. I still can’t believe I hosted and conceived of this lineup at 25. John Waters, Fran Lebowitz, Quentin Crisp, Taylor Mead, Cookie Mueller, John Sex and yes, Kenneth Anger appeared.
Invited speakers could do whatever they wanted and Anger wanted to show all of Scorpio Rising with the sound which I believe was over 30 minutes long. His visuals and rapid cutting style was really trailblazing and paved the way for music videos which were in their heyday at the time. Really perfect for a nightclub.
Martin Scorsese, who was influenced by Anger first saw Scorpio Rising in the mid-1960s when filmmaker Jonas Mekas screened it at the home of writer-director Vernon Zimmerman.
The soundtrack is really great, so we ended up showing the film although at some point I think the DJ started spinning current music and the club muted the soundtrack. Anger WAS angry about that.
But I did meet the man, introduced him to a crowd of fans, had a chat and got my copies of his lurid Hollywood Babylon 1 and 2 signed. These tomes would not go over well today as they make Jerry Springer reruns and TMZ look like CBS Sunday Morning. He’d be cancelled for them, in other words.
No details of Anger’s death are available yet.
Kenneth Anger was 96.
It is with deep sadness that we mourn the passing of visionary filmmaker, artist and author Kenneth Anger (1927–2023).
— Sprueth Magers (@SpruethMagers) May 24, 2023
Kenneth was a trailblazer. His cinematic genius and influence will live on and continue to transform all those who encounter his films, words and vision. pic.twitter.com/xIfxWNmGUK
