KENNETH ANGER

Lucifer, mon amour

"Nature is an inexhaustible source of visions of beauty and the poet must capture them with his personal point of view." Thus, Kenneth Anger made his statement of principles about art. Film director uncomfortable and dark, he’s the embodiment of the artistic triumph of American independent cinema and a clear leader in fields as diverse as pop art or music clips.

Some first steps in unfortunately unrecoverable films, led him to play with fire on waters impregnated with German Expressionism. Just finished the Second War, the film Fireworks (1947) is, in his own words, to make his dreamed explosive pyrotechnics came true: flaming desires from a libertarian mind eager to express itself. Result of just three days work, it was projected by Anger as an example of the possibilities of automatic writing as a new film language for the triumph of the dream. Its symbolism mosaic accompanied his entire career: Nazism, sadomasochism, romance, pornography, surrealism, occultism and homosexuality. Strangely, the thematic pillars of his works will eventually eclipse his films.

After the early fireworks, as the delicate work in Eaux d’Artifice (1953) and the epic orgy Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), he became a clear influence on the young directors of the French Nouvelle Vague like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

Thus, from the mid-fifty and specially during the sixties, he showed his most occultist side, with clear references to Lucifer as the bearer of the inspiring  light and the use of sex and drugs as an access to higher states of consciousness. Attracted by these same concepts, he collaborated with some of the visible heads of rock music at that time, like Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page, for the soundtracks of some of their films away from the classical music that accompanied his early works.

It’s in films like Scorpio Rising (1963), early look on the pop motorist aesthetics, Invocation of my demon brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1970-1980), hypnotic and mythological, where we can grasp the full development of his visual narrative capacity always escaping from a literary narration thanks to an extremist imagination fed by pop songs that accompany the scenes as both act in counterpoint.

He loves to show the name Lucifer tattooed on his chest and he simulated his own death by publishing its announcement in 1967. His provocative attitude and the publication of his book Hollywood Babylon (1985), where he described the sordid life of the golden age cinema stars, have left in the background the work of one of the most innovative directors in history.

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Text: Juan Carlos Romero
Photos: Kenneth Anger