Kenneth Anger passed on 11 May. An orbituary is given by Yahoo News
Kenneth Anger passed on 11 May. An orbituary is given by Yahoo News
A great loss for American culture and one of the early great filmmakers! He was an early influence on me, visually at least. Many-many-many-many years ago I was apart of a proposed production to make Hollywood Babylon into a mini-series.
How Anger ties together the "stream" of Thelema with the cultural influence of film and his role as the first "music video" maker is astounding and resonate.
"If you have come to help me, then you are wasting your time, but if you are here because your liberation is bound together with mine, then let us work together." Lilla Watson
American culture
Yes there is an argument that American Killture was exposed by Hollywood Babylon...or further glamorized....
@sangewanchuck56 Yes, my nephew just texted me. "Invocation of my demon brother" (Tonalities by Mick Jagger) and Lucifer Rising, soundtrack, Bobby Beausoleil, Manson groupie. Part of the Magick Latern Cycle. Check out a great article entitled "The use of colour in Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising ".
96 years! I knew that he was Old, but almost a century...Wow. First encountered his unforgettable name in my early teens reading about Jimmy Page, then more a few years later investigating AC. Searched for his films & my first impression was amazement at how well shot & edited they were for the time, especially as 'underground' cinema. He also made for a fascinating interview. Truly a legend in his own right, & also a figure of importance in AC's legacy.
@toadstoolwe
I did a google search for the title you shared. "The use of colour in Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising " and what came up was one link...This thread!
It seems like an interesting article, so if you can find it, please share.
@hadgigegenraum I'll give it a shot, Senses of cinema, http://www.sensesofcinema.com. Funny, I searched goggle under the title, and it was the first citation to come up.
Carl Abrahamsson's CINEMAGICIAN features some wonderful moments of conversation:
Kustom Kar Kammandos is the mover and shaker from a cinematic influence perspective, its gorgeous
"If you have come to help me, then you are wasting your time, but if you are here because your liberation is bound together with mine, then let us work together." Lilla Watson
Owner and Editor
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@lashtal Check out this article: Kenneth Anger and the Manson Family, http://dangerousminds, net. Not only did Bobby Beausoliel write the score for Lucifer Rising, but he also got a "starring role" in The Invocation of my Demon Brother" Mick Jagger and Anton LaVey make an appearance also.
o.
A world without Kenneth Anger is a poorer place. [...] Anger was like the devil in the flesh, a creature of underworld class and occult danger, a man who made trouble just by being who he was. Anger never became a star, exactly, but he became infamous and never compromised who he was. He lived to become your favorite filmmaker’s favorite filmmaker as the world grew to resemble his fabled Hollywood in all but its aesthetic.
Kenneth Anglemyer was born in 1927 in Santa Monica, the youngest of three children.
[...] Anglemyer started directing his own movies, many of them flirting with experimental montage (he discovered and fell in love with the work of Jean Cocteau, who later became a friend) before he was old enough to drive. He met like-minded memorabilia and history nut Curtis Harrington, who, like Rooney, became a lifelong friend and, like Kenneth, became an experimental filmmaker. [...] The two created a small group called The Creative Film Associates to distribute their work as well as that of other California-made non-narrative films, and they started sharing their favorite works by famous supposed devil-worshippers like Aleister Crowley and Joris-Karl Huysmans. Anglemyer idolized Crowley, the kitschy self-styled anti-Christian, like a rock star. His money, what little of it there was (his grandmother paid for his lifestyle), went to his art projects and drugs while he studied film at the University of Southern California. In 1947, at age 20, he made his first landmark movie, the heaving daydream “Fireworks,” the first film to be released under his new name. Kenneth Anglemyer was no more. Kenneth Anger had been born.
[...] His gorgeous 20-minute short “Rabbit’s Moon” was meant to be longer, but he snuck onto a soundstage at Films du Pantheon Studio and was caught before he could finish working. A proposed project about a famous occultist, cardinal D’este, was winnowed down to the 12-minute “Eaux D’Artifice.” Much of Anger’s work during this period would not be completed and shown until much later.
Back in the States, he befriended one of his acolytes, experimental pioneer Stan Brakhage; they attempted to collaborate, but the negatives were confiscated when neither paid the development fees. He made the half-hour “The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” in 1954, starring his friends, including Marjorie Cameron, the widow of rocket engineer Jack Parsons. Parsons, like Anger, was a convert to Aleister Crowley’s Thelemite religion and an important figure of American occultism. The film was a gorgeous, dreamy drift through costumed gods, faces, and images of animals and grams as Crowleyian occult symbols assail his characters. When Anger died on the 24th of May 2023, the critic Adam Piron lamented that Anger was “one of the few to understand cinema as ceremony.” “Inauguration,” like the best of Anger, seems like an induction into his arch-belief system and its pagan worship rather than merely a collection of stunningly strange pictures of demigods drinking deeply and wandering through purgatory.
In 1955, feeling despondent after the death of his friend Thomas Kinsey, the sex researcher, Anger returned to Paris for a spell of isolation. [...]
By the late ‘60s, Anger was as much a cultural fixture as any rock star, and his list of famous friends was growing. He started prepping for his newest film, “Lucifer Rising,” by tattooing “Lucifer” on his chest. It was to star musician Bobby Beausoleil, but between the two’s contentious relationship and Beausoleil’s murder charge (he killed fellow cultist Gary Hinman at the behest of Charles Manson), they never finished the movie (though the two eventually reconciled while Beausoleil was in prison). He recycled the footage into a new work called “Invocation of My Demon Brother” and then tried to remake “Lucifer” later with a score by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. Ever the people-pleaser, Anger fell out with Page over his girlfriend and threatened to put a hex on him. Marianne Faithful headed up the cast of the reimagined “Lucifer Rising,” first finished in the early ‘70s, though Anger tinkered with it repeatedly. It’s a film perfectly in line with the era’s visual psychedelia (to the shock of no one, his movies had become popular screening choices for audiences tripping acid), a wonderfully lithe survey of Thelemite images and occult suggestion, and could easily have filled out double bills with the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “The Holy Mountain” or Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point.”
Anger didn’t make a single movie between “Lucifer Rising” and “Don’t Smoke That Cigarette” in 1999. When interviewed for a PBS special about his life and art, he told the interviewer he was so broke he had to sell his air conditioner. He had written a sequel to Hollywood Babylon in 1984, but the response wasn’t as great. As with many provocateurs, including Waters and Andy Warhol, who Anger despised, staying relevant can become very difficult once your art has broken boundaries and changed tastes. Anger didn’t quite manage, aging into a slightly more benevolent version of the acidic hell-raiser he so gleefully played for decades.
Anger’s last decade of movies seemed less personal, some financed by his old friend Paul Getty, heir to the Getty millions who he met during his heyday roving around London looking for stars and money to make “Lucifer Rising.” Movies like “Elliott's Suicide,” “Mouse Heaven,” and “The Man We Want to Hang” lamented old friends and kindred spirits passing. Anger died in an assisted living facility after many years as a neglected valedictorian, a hellion the culture had outgrown as he spurned it from his diminished place [...]
Scout Tafoya
--- https://www.rogerebert.com/tributes/the-fire-is-gone-kenneth-anger-1927-2023
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@lashtal Is it true that at a 1966 anti-war demonstration Washington, D.C. Anger put a curse on the Pentagon. I read that in Ed Sander's The Family.
By the late ‘60s, Anger was as much a cultural fixture as any rock star, and his list of famous friends was growing. He started prepping for his newest film, “Lucifer Rising,” by tattooing “Lucifer” on his chest. It was to star musician Bobby Beausoleil, but between the two’s contentious relationship and Beausoleil’s murder charge (he killed fellow cultist Gary Hinman at the behest of Charles Manson), they never finished the movie (though the two eventually reconciled while Beausoleil was in prison). He recycled the footage into a new work called “Invocation of My Demon Brother” and then tried to remake “Lucifer” later with a score by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. Ever the people-pleaser, Anger fell out with Page over his girlfriend and threatened to put a hex on him. Marianne Faithful headed up the cast of the reimagined “Lucifer Rising,” first finished in the early ‘70s, though Anger tinkered with it repeatedly. It’s a film perfectly in line with the era’s visual psychedelia (to the shock of no one, his movies had become popular screening choices for audiences tripping acid), a wonderfully lithe survey of Thelemite images and occult suggestion, and could easily have filled out double bills with the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “The Holy Mountain” or Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point.”
Page's score was NEVER used by Anger. Although an unrelated recording was released as a album. Having listened to both Page and Beausoleil's, the latter's musical score is far superior. Page just has some kind of Sitar Drone. Totally atonal and boring.
I once had the honour to meet him very briefly after a fascinating talk he gave in Vienna a decade or so ago. I asked him about the whereabouts of his Cefalu footage when he was restoring the Abbey walls in the 50ies. He did not know, but they must be somewhere in the Kinsey institute that sponsored the restauration. It would be wonderful if this footage someday surfaces. To see the Abbey before all the Thelemic vandals had been there. Also, I think that Hollywood Babylon would still be a great mini series. I mean, true crime is "the" thing. RIP, Kenneth Anger.
@the_real_simon_iff That sounds amazing. An obviously question, has any one inquired about the footage from the Kinsey Institute? From my readings, I know they have an extensive film archive.
@toadstoolwe If I remember correctly, people have done it but to no avail. It is not to be found in their online searchable archives.
@the_real_simon_iff I would be willing to bet that it is probably in the hands of a private owner. (If it still exists at all) Lost films have been discovered before, maybe Lady Luck will smile on someone, and they will realize what they have found.
Here is the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University....(lol) re a search on Kenneth Anger:
https://iucat.iu.edu/kinsey?utf8=✓&search_field=all_field&q=Kenneth+Anger
@hadgigegenraum Very nice! Are any of the publications available online? It does not look like they are. These are all library citations. I guess someone could take a road trip to Indiana and read the books in their library. I am sure they would allow you to read them on site. Library borrowing privileges are probably just faculty and students.
The Fortean Times (FT434, August 2023, pages 26-27) has an obituary for Mr Anger. Two full pages, and three photos.
One is free to type out their opinions.
I agree with a certain percentage (%) of the latest opinion, the exact number, not rounded-off, not fiddled, will be determined on one of the many QBL threads, however, Kenneth actually did something that is noteworthy in early Thelemic depiction (d'pictures).
His work was shot on 16mm film, which is high-end amateur grade. Personally, my eary 8mm magical ceremonies and expeditions would be fantastic if they weren't slightly fuzzy to start and then washed out and murdered in various ways by the film to video procedure. They are still interesting ... to people of adventure. Here, try one, the first 6 minutes is Mexico City, the Pyramids (yeah, I climbed the big one and have proof from the top in the form of the moving images), and the van trip south - the real action exposition starts at 06:32 exactly ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhE18ls46Ts
I think I'll now watch the last 8 minutes in order gain a sense of awe before retiring.
@shiva I once owned the Magick Lantern cycle on video. Yes, I agree. The Opening scene in Lucifer Rising is quite epic, especially with the Beausoleil soundtrack. We see the title rising slowly from a sea of lava. And, yes the scene in Invocation of My Demon Brother that features Anger in full ceremonial regalia performing a ritual, holding up, and then smashing planetary sigils. It is definitely cool. The interesting thing is, it was performed in a Masonic temple, as the Crescent Moon and scimitar are clearly seen.
@shiva Pretty interesting time capsule of an adventure. The musical score is interesting also, especially Ghost Riders in the Sky
Anger was just another weirdo in the dustbin of history.
No, I don't think he was. He was a strange person in some ways, but I've yet to come across anybody who isn't.
He and Kenneth Grant had an interesting correspondence in 1955. Early that year, the Grants had seen The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome at the ICA cinema in central London, and thought very highly of it. Grant subsequently wrote an appreciative letter to Anger, sparking off not only a convivial correspondence but several visits to Kenneth and Steffi. When Anger went out to Cefalù later that year, gained access to the Abbey of Thelema, and set about removing the whitewash obscuring Crowley's decorations, his accounts in letters to the Grants are rivetting. They parted company over the Picture Post article, which Grant thought revived the scandal-mongering about Crowley from the newspapers of a few decades previously.
A few years ago, whilst in the latter stages of preparing The Incoming of the Aeon of Maat for publication, I came across in the Gerald Yorke Collection at the Warbug Institute, London, an archive of correspondence between Yorke and Anger. At the time, Anger was living with Marjorie Cameron, and took exception to the fact that Grant had written twice to Cameron.
Grant's letters to Anger will be included in Volume One of The Selected Letters of Kenneth Grant, currently being prepared for publication later this year.
@michael-staley That's all well and good. But bottom line, We ALL are going to wind-up in the dustbin of history. All this Crowley jazz, although interesting, will go the way of all perishable things.
Anicca, anicca ...
Everything passes away.
The point of the temporary Crowley-Thelema distraction is to get out before one (anyone) passes away. Then the distinction between being, passing, or getting stuck is of no concern.
I never cared much for Anger, and heard so many strange stories about him over the years, such as his death-threats and cursing. However, I've met people who knew him, and had good words to say about him. Some of the Magic Lantern series doesn't enthrall me overmuch, but others – such as Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Invocation of My Demon Brother – interest me greatly.
Thank you, @alan_obrien, for pointing out the Fortean Times article.
Grant's letters to Anger will be included in Volume One of The Selected Letters of Kenneth Grant, currently being prepared for publication later this year.
I suppose someone will be employed to open the envelopes.