Kenneth Anger

Kenneth Anger

As inaccessible as they are beautiful and haunting, the works of pioneering art film director Kenneth Anger vacillate somewhere between high art, complete trash, and cinematic legend. For lovers of cinema as an art form (as well as music video directors and film students the world over), these bold, independently-produced musings are some of the finest early examples of the playfulness of the form, not to mention it’s propensity to provoke. For people who go to the movies to see romantic comedies or stuff being blown up, the glossy set pieces will be likely be incomprehensible to the point of annoyance. Openly gay male film directors like John Waters or Todd Haynes (whose Poison plays like a grand rip-off of Anger’s jagged styling) owe a debt of gratitude to Anger, whose use of color and light is just as innovative and dazzling as a film made today. While it is easy to point out the gay themes in his films, Anger can be seen not only as the godfather of queer cinema, but also of indie-cinema: his budgets were virtually non-existent, and the production values might have been low; but the finished products were always regarded as works of art.
Anger, an acclaimed independent filmmaker and author (he is responsible for the notable Hollywood Babylon book series, which salaciously brings to light the seedier side of the American film industry), took his stage name at the precocious age of five and began making films shortly thereafter (Who’s Been Rocking My Dreamboat?” was released at the ripe old age of nine!). Many of his earliest works deal with his burgeoning homosexuality, captured most poignantly on the dream-like, quasi autobiographical Fireworks, a cinematic breakthrough. Anger himself stars as the troubled protagonist in the homoerotic mini-epic.
Fireworks (filmed while his parents were out of town in one weekend), begins with Anger getting out of bed and lighting a cigarette, only to be severely beaten and tortured by a gang of sailor-thugs. There...