Kenneth Anger

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Kenneth Anger (born February 3, 1927 in Santa Monica, California as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer) is an underground avant-garde film-maker and author.

As a child he played the child prince in the 1935 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream and attended the Maurice Kossloff Dancing School with Shirley Temple.

He gained fame and notoriety from the publication of Hollywood Babylon in 1958, a tell-all book of the scandals of Hollywood's rich and famous. He became fascinated with the supernatural and Aleister Crowley (as well as becoming an adherent of Crowley's religion of Thelema) sometime in his late teens and many of his films reflect occult themes. He began making films around age 11, but his early films were mostly destroyed. His first film to see distribution was Fireworks, filmed in Los Angeles in 1947, which gained the attention of Jean Cocteau, who then invited him to go to Paris. While most of his films are short subject (ranging from 3.5 minutes to 30 minutes) mood pieces, in 1955 he made a documentary film of the ruins of Crowley's Thelema abbey in Cefalu, Sicily which has since been lost.

Kenneth Anger also developed a close friendship with Dr. Alfred Kinsey of the Institute for Sex Research. Anger would later recall that Kinsey was his first customer after Kinsey purchased a copy of Fireworks when they first met in 1947. Anger eventually helped Kinsey build his film archive. The Anger Collection includes correspondence between the two men, as well as letters to and from former Institute director John Bancroft. Anger would later speak openly of his participation in Kinsey's research, including being filmed masturbating.

During the late 60's he associated with The Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger and convicted first degree murderer Bobby Beausoleil of the Charles Manson family who starred in Anger's 1969 film "Invocation Of My Demon Brother" which was soundtracked by Mick Jagger on Moog synthesizer and eventually completed the music for Anger's 1970 film Lucifer Rising from prison. Several of his films are collected in the 4 volume Magick Lantern Cycle, these are marked * in the filmography.

Kenneth Anger had a widely publicized spat with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page over the Lucifer Rising soundtrack. Anger claimed Page took three years to deliver the music, and the final product was only 25 minutes of droning and was useless. On top that, Anger accused Page of "having an affair with the White Lady" and being too strung out on drugs to complete the project. Page countered claiming he had fulfilled all his obligations, even going so far as to lend Anger his own film editing equipment to help him finish the project. Page's music was dumped eventually and replaced by the Beausoleil version completed in 1980 from prison.

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Filmography

  • Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat (1941)
  • Tinsel Tree (1941-1942)
  • Prisoner of Mars (1942)
  • The Nest (1943)
  • Escape Episode (1944)
  • Drastic Demise (1945)
  • Escape Episode (shorter sound version) (1946)
  • Fireworks (1947)*
  • Puce Moment (1949)*
  • The Love That Whirls (1949)
  • Maldoror (1951-1952, unfinished)
  • Eaux d'Artifice (1953)*
  • Le Jeune Homme et la Mort (1953)
  • Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954, recut in 1966)*
  • Thelema Abbey (1955)
  • Historie d'O (1959-1961)
  • Scorpio Rising (1963)*
  • Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965)*
  • Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969)*
  • Lucifer Rising (1970-1980)*
  • Rabbit's Moon (1972)*
  • Don't Smoke That Cigarette (2000)
  • The Man We Want to Hang (2002)
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External links

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See also

fr:Kenneth Anger he:קנת אנגר ru:Энгер, Кеннет fi:Kenneth Anger sv:Kenneth Anger

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