Kenneth Anger: A Demonic Visionary

by Alice L. Hutchison

Anger's impact on contemporary culture has been profound, with international repercussions: from mainstream and independent filmmakers, contemporary artists, and the music industry. He has created new genres and techniques in filmmaking: improvisation, pastiche, and through default of lack of funding, the music clip, in films such as Scorpio Rising, 1963, Kustom Kar Kommandos, 1965, and Puce Moment, 1949/70, pioneering the most fertile experimental collaborations with contemporary musicians. Those musicians include Mick Jagger (who created the soundtrack for Invocation of My Demon Brother, 1969; Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, and the infamous Bobby Beausoleil who contributed to Lucifer Rising, 1970-80, which also featured Marianne Faithfull. Anger has provided an elegantly subversive alternative to mass cultural representation, and his extraordinary images also serve to some degree as social documentary of the era.

Genres: Film, Art, Nonfiction, Biography

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

Reviews

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice Hutchison did a great thing by re-introducing the works of one of the great American filmmakers Kenneth Anger. As well as probably the best text on the man and his work as well. A great visionary, Anger short films are sort of magic spells in themselves. Wonderful still images from his work and other things as well. A film libary is not a film library unless they have this book.

[Cobertizo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Empezaré a rodar con el equinoccio de primavera. Estoy ensimismado en mi película, y una cosa con la que me he encontrado ya que es un film es sobre demonios, es tengo que trabajar deprisa, puesto que tienden a ir y venir... Un demonio es sólo una manera conveniente de etiquetar una fuerza (...) pero yo no lo he etiquetado así. Lucifer es el Dios de la Luz, no el diablo, esa es una falacia cristiana. El diablo son siempre los dioses de otros pueblos, antagónicos o proclamados enemigos del propio. Lucifer es el Ángel Rebelde detrás de lo que está ocurriendo hoy en el mundo. Su mensaje es que la Llave de la Alegría es la Desobediencia"