Kenneth Anger on set of Lucifer Rising, London, 1970.
©KENNETH ANGER
The Devil in the Details: Kenneth Anger,,the Inventor of a Celluloid Avant-Garde, Nears 90
….”Anger pleasured himself for Alfred Kinsey’s sex studies, tipped off the Rolling Stones to the joys of the devil, published a scabrous Tinseltown tell-all that predated today’s celebrity gossip fetish, helped François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard shift from writing for Cahiers du Cinéma to rewriting the rules of cinema, saw his muses in the Hells Angels spark the riots at Altamont, and lived with a guy who would stab a man to death at the behest of Charles Manson.
For decades, Anger was quite literally a cult figure—a filmmaker with a strong affinity for the occult teaching of Aleister Crowley, known only from clandestine midnight gatherings. In 2010, Jeffrey Deitch, then the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, wanted to include Anger in a show about L.A. artists. He was told, “Kenneth Anger, he’s no longer alive.”“It’s not an exaggeration to say he’s the inventor of independent cinema, he’s the inventor of gay cinema, and my friend David LaChapelle says he’s the inventor of the music video,” Deitch said. “This guy is astonishing in his contributions.”…..
read full interveiw by Nat Freeman here at ARTNEWS
The Devil in the Details: Kenneth Anger, the Inventor of a Celluloid Avant-Garde, Nears 90
