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Kenneth Anger RIP: The Magus of American Cinema dead at 96
05.24.2023
10:39 am
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Sad news to report, Kenneth Anger, the Magus of American cinema has died, aged 96. He’d been living for some time in an assisted living facility in Southern California. 

His art representatives at the Sprüth Magers gallery sent out the following press release:

With deep sadness, Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers, along with the entire gallery team, mourn the passing of the visionary filmmaker, artist, and author Kenneth Anger (1927–2023).

Through his kaleidoscopic films, which combine sumptuous visuals, popular music soundtracks, and a focus on queer themes and narratives, Anger laid the groundwork for the avant-garde art scenes of the later twentieth century, as well as for the visual languages of contemporary queer and youth culture. His earliest works, such as the 1947 black-and-white ecstatic short, Fireworks, established Anger as an enfant terrible of the filmmaking underground. In his works of the 1950s and 1960s, he pushed the camera apparatus to its limits, incorporating double exposure, found footage, and manipulations of the celluloid itself. Anger’s personal occultism, explored most deeply in his masterpieces Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969), and Lucifer Rising (1972), was a constant in his practice, with the act of transgression—from sacred to profane, from culture into counterculture, from old to new cinematic forms—becoming his defining mode of creation.

Kenneth was a trailblazer. His cinematic genius and influence will live on and continue to transform all those who encounter his films, words and vision.

Kenneth Anger (1927–2023) was a pioneer of avant-garde film and video art. His iconic short films are characterized by a mystical-symbolic visual language and phantasmagorical-sensual opulence that underscores the medium’s transgressive potential. Anger’s work fundamentally shaped the aesthetics of 1960s and 1970s subcultures, the visual lexicon of pop and music videos and queer iconography. The artist considered his life an artwork in its own right and frequently wove elements of myth, fact and fiction into his biography. His works can be understood as an integrative part of this life-as-artwork.

Anger’s keen perfectionism led him to assume all the usual filmmaking roles himself from the very beginning: In an unusual synthesis he handled all of the camera work, set design, costume design, film development and editing and acts as director, producer and actor in one. Even his earliest productions show the themes and artistic strategies that define his oeuvre. His experimental montage technique eschews spoken dialogue. Though possessed of certain narrative traits, its real power lies in a specific kind of suggestion. Anger’s first work, the 14-minute Fireworks (1947), was so provocative that the young artist was hauled to court on obscenity charges. Subject matter in the short film includes homosexual cruising, sailor fetish, sexual violence and gore. Its black-and-white images appear governed by an archetypal dream logic: phallic fireworks explode, the protagonist’s guts are crudely cut open to reveal a compass in his viscera and a sailor walks through a shot with a Christmas tree on his head. His 38-minute Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) sees this dream logic tip completely into a surreal Technicolor color frenzy. The result is a sexually charged, orgiastic mixture of myth and ecstasy somewhere between period film set, opera stage, Kabuki theater and nightclub.

Later films including Scorpio Rising (1963), Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1972–80) develop this exuberant visual language further and also involve an expansion of their film-technique repertoire. Cine-sculptural strategies including double exposure or physical manipulation of the celluloid, the striking contrast of superficial pop music and disturbing images, the integration of found documentary footage and the use of subliminally-charged religious and mythological symbols enhance the films’ completely hypnotic effect. Influenced by the theories of the British writer Aleister Crowley, these works are also distinguished by a clear affinity for the occult and the enactment of an explicitly “perverse” imagination. Images of motorcycle gangs, orgies of violence, Egyptian deities, archetypal volcanic and desert landscapes and satanic rituals produce highly atmospheric, psychedelic psychodramas rife with breaches of taboo, sexual neuroses and voyeuristic fantasies.

Anger is also the author of Hollywood Babylon (1959), a book that anticipates the highs and lows of celebrity journalism. Mainstream Hollywood cinema is both the matrix of Anger’s work and its antipode. The visual lexicon of his films refers again and again to its dominant images while simultaneously subverting them in a radical way. At the heart of his practice was the fundamental, mind-expanding power of the film medium, a power absent in the genres of mainstream cinema practices. Anger considered cinematographic projection a psychosocial ritual capable of unleashing physical and emotional energies. The artist saw film as nothing less than a spiritual medium, a conveyer of spectacular alchemy that transforms the viewer.

I last saw Kenneth myself in September of 2022 when I interviewed him for an upcoming TV docu series I’m making on modern occultism. He was in good spirits that day, but obviously very, very frail.

I think it goes without saying that “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” but Anger was always a one-off. The world became a lot less interesting today. RIP Kenneth Anger.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.24.2023
10:39 am
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Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Autumnal Equinox Ritual: A magickal working in light and sound
09.16.2019
04:35 pm
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but who knows, this weekend in Los Angeles might be your last chance ever to bask in the Luciferian legend that is filmmaker Kenneth Anger. He is, after all, 92 years old at this point. He might have another good decade in him, but you never know, so why take that chance? (The same could be said, of course, about his old chums the Rolling Stones who are about 15 years younger.)

This Saturday, September 21, Spaceland and Lethal Amounts present Anger and Brian Butler in a rare appearance as Technicolor Skull:

On the occasion of the Autumnal Equinox, Kenneth Anger and Los Angeles-based artist Brian Butler will perform at the historic Regent Theater in Downtown Los Angeles. A selection of Anger’s iconic films including Invocation of My Demon Brother, Lucifer Rising, and Scorpio Rising will be presented along with a conversation on the occult forces which drive these two visionary artists. The presentation will climax with the shattering ritualistic spectacle of magick, sound and light; Kenneth Anger & Brian Butler’s Technicolor Skull.

According to VICE: “Anger and Butler’s act employs guitars, a theremin, and a 60,000 watt sound system—the type of stuff normally associated with such trivialities as mere music—in combination with visuals and stagecraft, to plunge audiences into a kind of ecstatic nightmare. If you’ve ever seen Anger’s Lucifer Rising, you’re at least partially ready for this magick ritual of light and sound.”

I saw the Technicolor Skull performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles a few years back, during Anger’s big show there. It’s quite extraordinary: with Anger’s films projected behind them, Butler plays a Flying V guitar with a E-bow making a diabolical noise while Anger plays the theremin as if he is fisting it with manic glee (lest you think I am exaggerating for comic effect, first off, we are talking about Kenneth Anger here and second, he pointedly rolled up his sleeve before sticking his fist through the theremin’s… hole.)

Saturday, September 21 · Doors 8:00 PM / Show 9:00 PM at The Regent Theater. Buy tickets HERE
 

 

Above, Floria Sigismondi’s “72 hours in André Balazs’ Chateau Marmont with Kenneth Anger.”

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.16.2019
04:35 pm
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Lucifer rising: When the Stones were evil
09.01.2017
08:13 am
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Call me disputatious—or else DON’T, it’s entirely up to you—my favorite Stones album has always been Their Satanic Majesties Request. It’s practically the only one that I still play all the way through. It sounds so amazing as one great big, trippy chunk, that it would be a shame not to experience the whole thing in one go. Many Stones fans and music critics hated TSMR when it came out and saw the album as a weak attempt to out weird the Beatles after they’d unleashed Sgt Pepper’s on the world, but time has been very kind to Their Satanic Majesties Request. To me, it’s just a thing of great beauty, with the normal blues-based Stones sound thrown out the window and replaced with a colorful sonic palette the likes of which they would never return to.  It’s a fantastic headphones album, too, the closest they ever got to doing a Pink Floyd (and it’s NOT a Sgt Pepper’s wannabe, okay? Obviously TSMR (badly) wants to be the Stones’ Piper at the Gates of Dawn!)

Anyway, I’m not saying that it IS the best Stones album, I’m just saying that it’s MY favorite. (For the record, my favorite Stones song is “Monkey Man,” followed by “Stray Cat Blues,” then “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)”—dark horses, all, I grant you. I’m also partial to “I Don’t Know Why,” but the Glimmer Twins didn’t write that one—it’s a Stevie Wonder cover.)

Their Satanic Majesties Request is getting re-released on September 22 by ABKCO in a 50th anniversary deluxe box set that’s packaged in a slick, limited edition bespoke box set that comes with two records (a stereo and mono pressing of the album, remastered by Bob Ludwig, with the lacquers cut at Abbey Road Studios) and two SACDs (which will still play in a normal CD player) of the stereo and mono mixes. Overkill? Oh probably, but then again I already own two copies of the original stereo LP with the 3-D lenticular cover, the 2002 SACD and a DSD download of the mono mix from that recent Rolling Stones in Mono box set. Maybe I’m the wrong middle-aged guy to ask. (It sounds very nice, by the way. Not sure it’s going to displace my original wax, but it sounds quite tasty in case you were wondering. The mono mix reveals a far punkier-sounding album and is absolutely worth having.)
 

 
Anyway, if you ask me, the Stones’ “demonic” phase, inaugurated, if you will, by their association with the Magus of Cinema, Kenneth Anger, was when the band were truly at their peak. Mick was still quite into his Satan/Lucifer thing well into the Let It Bleed/Gimme Shelter-era, but after Altamont, Jagger was often seen wearing a crucifix around his neck, perhaps seeking to put down all that chaotic hoodoo Age of Horus energy he’d help raise? Have sympathy for the poor devil. Jagger had a shamanic current running through his body during the Sixties that killed quite a few of his friends and contemporaries. Today, like a rock and roll Dorian Gray, he hardly looks any worse for the wear.
 

Kenneth Anger’s “Invocation of My Demon Brother” with a bleating one-note (but super effective!) Moog synthesizer soundtrack by Mick Jagger.

Much more after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.01.2017
08:13 am
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Lucifer Rising live in concert: Watch Bobby Beausoleil perform his Kenneth Anger soundtrack, 1978
11.16.2016
12:28 pm
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You can buy a signed replica of this jacket on Kenneth Anger’s website

After Kenneth Anger fired Jimmy Page from his long-delayed Lucifer Rising film project and then publicly bad-mouthed the Led Zeppelin guitarist during a bitchy press conference, the magus of cinema turned again to imprisoned Manson Family member Bobby Beausoleil, who had been his original choice to record the film’s music. This was before the two had a falling out in 1969 and before Beausoleil was charged with the murder of music teacher Gary Hinman over a drug deal gone bad. He’d been in prison since 1970, but when he’d heard that Anger had sacked Page, Beausoleil contacted Anger to inform him that he had the means (and the latitude from a liberal warden at Tracy Prison) to be able to record the soundtrack.

The extraordinarily weird music Beausoleil produced with his Freedom Orchestra (which also included another imprisoned Manson Family member Steve “Clem” Grogan on guitar) matched Anger’s occult vision perfectly, producing a stunning masterpiece. Additional music recorded by Beausoleil and the Freedom Orchestra was released as a box set in 2005 as The Lucifer Rising Suite (Original Soundtrack and Sessions Anthology) and is highly recommended.

Yesterday some video appeared on Bobby Beausoleil’s YouTube channel of an astonishing live performance by the Freedom Orchestra at Tracy Prison contemporaneous to when they were actually recording the Lucifer Rising soundtrack. Some of what was performed here, I believe is exactly what we hear on the soundtrack. Last month, Beausoleil, currently serving his life sentence in the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, had another bid for parole denied by the California Parole Board. He’s now 69 years old.

If you are a Kenneth Anger fan, prepare to have your fucking mind blown, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.16.2016
12:28 pm
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Kenneth Anger Resort Collection: New ‘Golden Scarab’ lightweight Lucifer Rising jacket for Summer
07.05.2016
04:43 pm
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In recent years underground filmmaker, author and occultist Kenneth Anger has added fashion maven to his multi-hyphenate resume with his tee-shirts and clothing endeavors. Now he’s taking his designer apparel to another level: Witness Anger’s new lightweight “Resort Collection” Lucifer Rising jacket, “ideal” he claims

“...for a midsummer night’s sorceries. The deluxe “Golden Scarab Edition” jackets are made with large embroidery on a vibrant satin material, as if they’d gone through a time machine more than a few times—landing someone in the next century.”

The jackets are the latest release from Anger and LA-based artist Brian Butler’s Lucifer Brothers Workshop:

Although the satin ‘souvenir’ bomber has come into vogue recently with labels such as Louis Vuitton, Valentino and Saint Laurent, Kenneth Anger’s original design tops them all. Featuring a palette known locally as Hodos Chamelionis, or the Path of the Chameleon—the colors of the forces which lie beyond the physical universe, happens to be the Lucifer Brothers Workshop’s house mascot. Here, they are flitted over gold and black satin in a limited edition of 333 with labels signed by Kenneth Anger himself.

Re-imagined in black and gold satin this lightweight edition of the iconic Lucifer Rising jacket is now in Anger’s online store and available to order.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.05.2016
04:43 pm
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Kenneth Anger unveils unseen occult art masterpieces by Marjorie Cameron and Aleister Crowley


 
Underground film legend Kenneth Anger has seen a huge wave of interest in his work since his acclaimed “ Magick Lantern Cycle” films became widely available to a new generation on DVD over a decade ago. The now 88-year-old director and author has made several new films in recent years, venturing into music with the Technicolor Skull project, and even the world of fashion, shooting a campaign for Italian fashion house Missoni and producing a limited edition reproduction of the iconic rainbow “Lucifer” baseball jacket from his film Lucifer Rising. Archival prints made from high resolution frame scans from his movies sell for top dollar in art galleries in New York, Paris and Tokyo.
 

 
And now, Anger is branching out into the world of retail, debuting a hybrid pop-up art gallery/store at the Art Los Angeles Contemporary art fair. Produced in collaboration with Anger’s longtime associate Brian Butler, the Lucifer Brothers pop-up shop will be selling original art, as well as some reasonably-priced signed limited edition prints, Kenneth Anger tee-shirts and the above pictured Lucifer Rising baseball jacket.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LOS ANGELES, CA 1/28/2016

The Lucifer Brothers pop-up art gallery and store is the culmination of Kenneth Anger’s lifelong obsession with the occult. In 1955 Anger was the first to revisit Aleister Crowley’s former temple in Cefalù, Sicily. With the help of Alfred C. Kinsey, Anger painstakingly restored Crowley’s otherworldly murals which spilled across the inside walls of the villa, removing layers of whitewash to reveal the nightmares underneath. Prior to this Anger connected with Marjorie Cameron, the widow of famed JPL rocket scientist and occultist Jack Parsons, casting her in his classic film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome in 1956. Recently the art world has taken great interest of Cameron’s body of work, with her esoteric art—or what remains of it—included in the popular museum exhibit “Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle” and in recent solo career retrospectives of her work in Los Angeles and Manhattan.

After attending the Cameron exhibit at MOCA and a follow up showing at Jeffrey Deitch’s gallery in New York, Anger lamented that Cameron’s most powerful occult works remained unseen. Through his web of arcane connection’s Anger now unveils Cameron’s monumental life-sized portrait of a demon entitled “Blue Prophet” which was inspired by visions Cameron experienced during her marriage to Jack Parsons and her part in the infamous Babalon Working ritual that included Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Other works by Australian artist Rosaleen Norton (aka “The Witch of Kings Cross) whose powerful paintings are seldom encountered in the US, British occultist Aleister Crowley and Anger himself will be made available to the public for the first time.

Kenneth Anger is lauded as an influential experimental filmmaker, actor, and author of the infamous Hollywood Babylon gossip books. His films, which include Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Scorpio Rising (1964) and Lucifer Rising (1980) have inspired filmmakers as disparate as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and John Waters.

The Art Los Angeles Contemporary event—and the Lucifer Brothers pop-up gallery—opens this evening. On Saturday January 30th at 3:30pm Anger will make a special appearance onstage at the ALAC Theatre, which will be set up at the Barker Hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, where the fair is being held.

I saw Kenneth at the opening of the Marjorie Cameron retrospective at MOCA in the museum’s annex at the Pacific Design Center in 2014. Ken’s normally quite gracious and a lovely guy to converse with, but that night he was PISSED OFF, alleging that the museum was exhibiting something that was stolen from him in the early 1960s, a rare first edition of Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth, which is worth several thousand dollars today. All 200 original copies of that lavishly published Moroccan leather-bound edition of The Book of Thoth were signed and numbered by Crowley’s hand, and although the book was being displayed locked under glass, Anger was positive that he knew exactly what number this particular book was and demanding that the case be unlocked to prove that it was his stolen property. He even brought along an FBI officer as his guest to the event! I don’t know what ultimately became of the situation, but it was an interesting evening to be sure. I’ve always wanted to see Anger get, er, Anger-y and even at his age, his performance didn’t disappoint.

The press release makes mention of “what remains of it” regarding Cameron’s art. Cameron herself destroyed nearly ALL of her paintings and sketchbooks, burning them in an act of “ritualized suicide.” What you can see below, in Curtis Harrington’s extraordinary portrait of the artist, Wormwood Star, is perhaps the sole surviving documentation of that work (outside of the astral plane…). I don’t think more than two of the pieces seen onscreen below still exist. Maybe only one of them.

So very few pieces by Marjorie Cameron have survived—some smaller watercolor paintings and some pencil sketches, one large oil painting that the late Curtis Harrington had owned—and so the one that Anger is unveiling at his Lucifer Brothers pop-up gallery, titled “Blue Prophet” (see above) is a real coup for the Art Los Angeles Contemporary fair. I’ve seen this large watercolor in person, twice, and it’s a truly weird and mind-bending thing to behold. Most of her work is on the small side, but this one is about the size of a door and at least 2x to 3x larger than most of Cameron’s extant work that I’ve ever seen. To my mind, it’s one of the very best ones.
 
Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.28.2016
12:38 pm
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Kenneth Anger launches official ‘Lucifer Rising’ baseball jacket in time for the holidays
11.23.2015
10:40 am
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The headline above came straight from the press release because it made me laugh. Can’t think of what to buy your favorite magus for Christmas? [Or Noel Fielding, wait, he’s already got one.] Yes that’s right, Kenneth Anger, avant garde underground filmmaker is now in the fashion business. Back in September Kenneth Anger “signature” tees went on sale, and now you can keep warm this winter with an “official” Lucifer Rising baseball jacket available only at his website.

Hollywood, CA November 23, 2015 – The story behind Kenneth Anger’s undisputed masterpiece, Lucifer Rising, is as exciting and bizarre as the film itself. Featuring such pop icons as Jimmy Page, Marianne Faithfull, Donald Cammell (co-director of the film Performance) and Bobby Beausoleil (member of the Charles Manson family and convicted murderer), the production was plagued with bizarre coincidences and sinister backlashes. After thirteen years of filming Kenneth Anger was determined to complete the film despite the almost surreal obstacles that materialized every step of the way.

A recognized master of avant garde film, Kenneth Anger’s influence can be seen in filmmakers as diverse as Martin Scorsese (who calls him “without a doubt, one of our greatest artists”), Roger Corman, George Lucas, Gus Van Sant, Guy Maddin, and David Lynch, not to mention the pop art of Andy Warhol, and almost every music video. He also gained notoriety as the author of the bestseller, Hollywood Babylon, a tell-all book revealing scandals and controversies in Hollywood among the rich and famous. The interest in Anger’s work shows no sign of abating in 21st century. The objects seen in his films, such as Anger’s custom made ‘Lucifer’ and Scorpio Rising jackets have now become cult icons in themselves.

I’ve been told that the Lucifer Rising jackets are already selling like the proverbial hotcakes and they aren’t planning a second run of these puppies, so if you want one you might not want to hesitate. The production run was described to me as “just a handful.”

In addition, there’s a second newly listed Lucifer Rising item for sale on kennethanger.org, a signed reproduction of “The Magick Lantern Cycle” poster, as originally painted by Page Wood.
 

 
Each poster will be signed in the area with the negative space by Kenneth Anger personally. Can an official Scorpio Rising motorcycle jacket be far behind?

Below, a clip from Brian Butler’s Raising Lucifer documentary:

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.23.2015
10:40 am
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Raising Lucifer: Kenneth Anger curses Bobby Beausoleil and turns him into a toad
09.30.2015
12:33 pm
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There is a legion of legends that surround legendary underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger—how he cursed Jimmy Page, for one, and that he threw a gold-painted brick through Mick Jagger’s window in London for another—but the story of how he cursed ill-fated Manson Family associate Bobby Beausoleil and “turned him into a toad” is one of the best-known.

Most Anger fans have probably already heard this story, but have you ever heard it straight from the mouths of Kenneth Anger and Bobby Beausoleil? Here’s an exclusive clip for Dangerous Minds readers that was produced by Ken’s manager, Brian Butler, featuring a rare interview with Beausoleil that was shot inside of a Federal prison in California.

The event described in the piece was advertised with the vintage Haight-Ashbury poster/handbill seen at the top of this post. You can purchase a limited edition reprint of this poster—hand-signed by Kenneth Anger—via the Mage of American Cinema’s website. There’s also a striking Kenneth Anger “signature” tee-shirt for purchase. Both are in strictly limited editions. More at Kenneth Anger.org.
 

 
“Raising Lucifer” from Brian Butler:

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.30.2015
12:33 pm
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Triptych version of Kenneth Anger’s ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’ not seen in 50 years screens
06.11.2015
03:31 pm
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Known for being a tireless tinkerer who often created multiple edits of his films—and inspired by Abel Gance’s silent masterpiece Napoléon—Kenneth Anger created a special triptych version of his Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. This version of the film was screened only one time, at “Expo 58” the 1958 World Fair held in Brussels, Belgium.

The triptych version of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome has not be screened for over fifty years, but a restored version will be premiered on June 25th, 2015 at one of the top cinemas in the world, the Max Linder Panorama in Paris. The presentation is a production of Sprueth Magers, Berlin and Brian Butler and the team at Lucifer Brothers Workshop in Hollywood.

Anger’s infamous avant garde occult vision features the likes of erotic writer Anaïs Nin, witchy artist Marjorie Cameron (widow of rocket scientist/occultist Jack Parsons) as the Scarlet Woman and Kali, film director Curtis Harrington as Cesare the sleepwalker, silent film era actor Samson De Brier in several roles and Anger himself as Hecate. The film takes the name “pleasure dome” from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan.”

Here’s a preview:

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.11.2015
03:31 pm
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‘Kenneth Anger: Film as Magical Ritual’: Jaw-dropping German TV doc from 1970
09.16.2014
06:06 pm
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“Magick is action. Mysticism is a withdrawal from action”

If you’re a Kenneth Anger fan, be prepared to be seriously blown away by this astonishing German television documentary from 1970 that shows the master at work on Lucifer Rising. It’s fun to ponder, as you watch, what the average German must have thought about this film, which doesn’t flinch from presenting some of the most outrageous ideas and imagery ever to be broadcast to an entire (unsuspecting) nation. It’s magnificently freaky stuff.

Not only would this have been the first look the world would get of Anger’s magnum opus (which he is seen shooting Méliès-style in a tiny space) there are substantial excerpts from Fireworks, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Rabbit’s Moon, Puce Moment, and Invocation of My Demon Brother, which showed hash smoking (and cocks!) on TV. It’s impossible to imagine something like this ever getting on television in America 44 years ago, but I don’t think the BBC would have touched something this insane at the time, either.

As filmmaker Reinhold E. Thiel admits in his voiceover, it was Anger directing himself that they got on film. As he states, Anger really wasn’t that into allowing them to film him in the first place, but when he did relent it was on his terms. Anger’s interview segments were shot as he sat behind a makeshift altar, lit in magenta and inside of the magical “war gods” circle seen at the end of the film.
 

 
Of special note is we see Anger flipping through his “Puce Women” sketchbook (he’s an excellent illustrator) of his unmade tribute to the female archetypes of Hollywood’s golden era and the architecture of movie star homes (This notebook was on display at the Anger exhibit at MOCA in Los Angeles). Anger is also seen here shooting scenes with his Lucifer, Leslie Huggins (both interior shots in Anger’s makeshift studio and among the stones at Avebury) and with the adept in the war gods circle. Oddly, we can hear what the adept is saying (“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”) whereas in the final film he just seems to be muttering something mysterious when Lucifer appears.

Anger discusses his Aleister Crowley-inspired theories of art: How he views his camera like a wand and how he casts his films, preferring to consider his actors, not human beings but as elemental spirits. In fact, he reveals that he goes so far as to use astrology when making these choices.

This is as direct an explanation of Anger’s cinemagical modus operandi as I have ever heard him articulate anywhere. It’s a must see for anyone interested in his work and showcases the Magus of cinema at the very height of his artistic powers. Fascinating.
 

 
Thank you Spencer Kansa, author of Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron

Posted by Richard Metzger
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09.16.2014
06:06 pm
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Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman


 
Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art has announced the mounting of 91 artworks and ephemera relating to the life’s work of the eccentric LA bohemian legend Marjorie Cameron. The show goes up on October 11 at MOCA’s Pacific Design Center annex and will close on January 11, 2015. “Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman” will feature paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, poetry and correspondence between Cameron and her husband rocket scientist/occultist Jack Parsons, and with the great mythologist Joseph Campbell.

In recent years Cameron’s work has begun to be reassessed by the art world, in part inspired by her close association with artists like Wallace Berman and George Herms, actor Dennis Hopper and underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger. As interest in their work increased, so has curiosity about the odd, flaming haired creature from Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Sadly much of her work was deliberately burned by the artist herself in the 50s and can only be glimpsed at in Curtis Harrington’s short cinematic portrait of Cameron, “Wormwood Star.” (See below)
 

 
The show will highlight the recent publication of Songs for the Witch Woman, an absolutely stunning coffee table art book / facsimile reproduction of Cameron’s drawings and watercolors along with Parsons’ metaphysical and occult poetry produced by Fulgur Esoterica. (The book was printed in a very limited edition, and is available now. If this seems like the kind of item that you would like to own—it’s a knockout, finely published at a very high quality—buy it now instead of waiting until next year when it’ll be selling for $500 on eBay. If you like this kind of thing, I’ll say it again, it’s particularly nice. There’s a beautifully composed foreword by the OTO’s WIlliam Breeze, who knew Cameron, to recommend it as well.)
 

 
The exhibition is being organized by guest curator Yael Lipschutz with MOCA’s senior curator Alma Ruiz along with the Cameron-Parsons Foundation. The museum will produce a full color catalogue with 75 illustrations for the exhibit.

Below, Curtis Harrington’s “Wormwood Star.” Heartbreaking to consider how many of these paintings are gone forever.
 

 
And speaking of Cameron, her biographer, Spencer Kansa sent me this curious piece of 60s experimental filmmaking that Cameron was involved with:

Za is an early-70s cinepoem by Elias Romero, the underground filmmaker, and one of the main pioneers of the liquid light shows that he began projecting in the late-50s in San Francisco and at Ben Shapiro’s Renaissance Club on the Sunset Strip. Za was filmed in Big Sur and features the movie actress Diane Varsi, portraying an alchemist cum poet. Varsi had already runaway from the superficiality of Hollywood by the time this was filmed, in order to pursue a more artistic and meaningful life. And, interestingly, the raggy dayglo outfits she wears in the film were created by Cameron, no less. Cameron and Elias were old friends by the time this film was made. He had been married to Cameron’s confidante, the poetess Aya. In Wormwood Star Aya admits that: “For years, Cameron never forgave me for splitting up with Elias.”

Watching it today, the film is, er, interesting. I guess back then it probably helped that most of its original viewers were heavily dosed-up.

 

 
Thank you Lyvia Filotico!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.30.2014
03:08 pm
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Kenneth Anger and Marjorie Cameron discuss Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard
04.30.2014
03:32 pm
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In 1987 artist/occultist Marjorie Cameron and Kenneth Anger took part in a BBC Radio 4 documentary titled “Ruthless Adventure: The Lives of L. Ron Hubbard.” Bohemian weirdo Cameron was a participant in the infamous “Babalon Working” sex magic rituals conducted by her husband rock scientist Jack Parsons and the future founder of Scientology.

The interview is referenced in Spencer Kansa’s Cameron biography Wormwood Star The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron:

In August 1987, Cameron was featured in a BBC Radio 4 documentary entitled Ruthless Adventure: The Lives of L. Ron Hubbard. The decidedly suspect programme was researched and narrated by Margaret Percy, who interviewed Cameron earlier that year at her home. Kenneth Anger also contributed to the documentary and, for a while at any rate, the two appeared to have settled into a brother-sister type of relationship, with all the ensuing ups and downs. They were even talking about collaborating on another film together.

It was Anger who put the BBC researcher in contact with Cameron, and when Percy sat down with her host at her home on Genesee, she could still detect a vestige of beauty in her, despite the wrinkles and ravages of age: “I thought she must’ve been stunning when she was younger,” Percy attests. One standout memory from their meeting came when Percy asked a couple of questions that seemed to make Cameron uncomfortable and on both times, as if on cue, her dove Pax began cooing in the background. “It was an eerie experience,” Percy recalls.

Back in 1969, the British Sunday Times ran an expose on Hubbard’s participation with Jack in The Babalon Working and cited Aleister Crowley as a catalytic influence on Hubbard’s teachings. To counter this claim, Hubbard issued a cover story in which he painted himself as a cloak-and dagger intelligence agent, sent in to the Fleming mansion on South Orange Grove, to rescue his future wife Betty from the evil clutches of Jack Parsons’ black magic ring. This dubious scenario played hard and fast with the facts, yet in the subsequent radio broadcast Cameron, surprisingly, gave credence to this line, musing how Hubbard, “may have been an agent – as he claims.”

In discussions with [the OTO’s] William Breeze she also reconsidered the circumstances surrounding her own initial involvement with Jack: “She would space-out and say, ‘Maybe I was sent in there’ (to Jack’s house on Orange Grove) ‘maybe I was an intelligence drone.’”

It was clear that over recent years there’d been a sea change in Cameron’s view of L. Ron Hubbard, as Breeze explains: “She may have reached some sort of accord with the Scientologists. She was approached by them and knew some people in LA – that’s how she got Jack’s FBI file. She wasn’t down on them and she wasn’t down on Hubbard anymore. She actually liked Ron. She thought he was charming.”

Over the decades, The Church of Scientology had grown into a multimillion dollar empire, boasting movie star converts, but one person whose low opinion of Hubbard had decidedly not wavered, and had only grown more virulent over time, was Kenneth Anger. To a perennial Hollywood-watcher like him, Scientology’s foothold in Tinseltown only added fuel to his ire, and during his own interview for the same radio documentary he made his feelings abundantly clear, describing Hubbard as an “elemental demon.” Even though she’d never been a member of either organizations, Cameron believed that due to her rich history, she had earned a rightful place in the highest echelons of both the O.T.O. and Church of Scientology.

The newly revised edition of Kansa’s Wormwood Star The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron has just been published and features over 20 new images, including rare stills of Cameron and Jack Parsons taken from a 1947 home movie that Kansa uncovered. Wormwood Star is now available on the Amazon Kindle for the first time.

Interest in this once obscure artist continues to grow; Fulgur is publishing Songs for the Witch Woman by Cameron and Jack Parsons and “Song for the Witch Woman: The Art of Marjorie Cameron”—the first full-scale exhibit of her work—will be mounted in Los Angeles in October.

Listen to “Ruthless Adventure: The Lives of L. Ron Hubbard” by clicking here.
 
Below, artist George Herms, filmmaker Curtis Harrington and Kenneth Anger discuss Marjorie Cameron in “Cinderella of the Wastelands”:

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.30.2014
03:32 pm
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The Unholy Grail of ‘Lost’ Films: Kenneth Anger’s ‘Lucifer Rising’ with Jimmy Page soundtrack
04.17.2014
11:05 am
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Tonight a lucky audience in downtown Los Angeles, seated in the opulent setting of the theatre at the Ace Hotel (once the original United Artists Theatre co-owned by Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford) will be treated to a number of Kenneth Anger rarities that have been recently rediscovered and restored by Anger’s producer/manager/collaborator filmmaker Brian Butler. Among them are alternate versions of The Magick Lantern Cycle films and the mind-blowing, but ill-fated collaboration between Anger and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, both famously devotees of Aleister Crowley’s philosophy of Thelema.

The story of their falling out has long been a foundation of the Led Zeppelin mythos: Anger had been living in Page’s Tower House abode in London, editing Lucifer Rising on the same film equipment used on The Song Remains The Same. While Page was on tour with Led Zeppelin, his girlfriend suddenly kicked Anger out, not even allowing him to get his things. A few days later, the mercurial Magus of Cinema threw a hissy over not getting an additional five minutes of music he needed to complete Lucifer Rising when he wanted it, phoned the Swan Song office and “fired” Page—who was in America and apparently mystified by the whole exercise—from the project. Anger did his patented “curse” routine very publicly, going so far as accusing Page of being a mere “dabbler” in the occult and a rich, lazy junkie. Rock journalists at the time began to speculate if Anger’s curse had worked when a succession of tragic events ended Led Zeppelin’s reign as the world’s biggest rock group.

Pages’ Lucifer RIsing score is wonderfully perverse: a languid but steadily building Middle Eastern-sounding drone, festooned with chanting, tabla, screaming mellotron, a sonically shifting low frequency, foreboding ambiance and shimmering 12-string guitar work. It’s a mad, diabolical symphony of beautiful evil; a fascinating piece of unconventional aggressively avant garde music from one of the rock era’s most mysterious living legends. Married to Anger’s imagery, it’s an exquisite aesthetic and spiritual experience.

The world’s two most famous, most artistically high-level Thelemite magicians collaborated for several years and frustratingly, the fruits of that effort have been seen by very few people. And not for four decades at that.
 

 

Over email, I asked Brian Butler a few questions.

How or where did you locate this print?

Brian Butler: I got a call from a storage facility who told me that they had found an “aberated” print of Lucifer Rising. They asked if they should throw it away or if we wanted to keep it. This was a year ago. I was so busy that I didn’t think much of it and put it in storage. Gradually as I started to inventory Kenneth’s archive I found old press clippings and film programs. I found it interesting how meticulous he was in curating a unique experience for the audience. In 1966 he began screening his films as The Magick Lantern Cycle and designed a thirteen-page booklet with a different color for each page. He also recut Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome as the “Sacred Mushroom Edition” for this occasion. In the audience notes were included specific instructions on when to take LSD (still legal at the time) to time it for that film.

I started to notice how The Magick Lantern Cycle evolved in the early 1970s with different versions of Lucifer Rising. It’s seems he began including this in the program as he was shooting it—“Lucifer Rising Chapter One” was shown in 1970—and he experimented with various soundtracks including Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother.

Eventually Jimmy Page came onboard in 1973. For someone of the stature that Jimmy Page had reached in 1973 it was quite radical to do an avant garde soundtrack strictly as an artistic endeavor, although Mick Jagger did the Moog soundtrack for Kenneth’s Invocation of My Demon Brother in 1969. They worked together for several years with at least two different versions being produced, one in 1974 and one in 1975.

Which one is this?

Brian Butler: After a lot of research, I found it to be the 1975 version—the most developed of four versions known to exist. It ends with “To be continued” and was obviously a work in progress.

In one interview I found, Jimmy Page refers to when he screened Lucifer Rising in his room hotel room on the sixth floor and seemed delighted that his haunting score terrified guests up on the twelfth floor. He also mentions making a special trip to a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to be sure the music was synced up correctly. The Anger/Page version was exhibited to the public at least a few times, and also privately, for potential investors.
 

 
The Films of Kenneth Anger” will be introduced by the filmmaker and is a co-production of Kenneth Anger, Brian Butler and Cinespia. The former United Artists Theatre is one of the most opulent movie palaces ever built in America. For a while it was owned by freaky TV minister Dr. Gene Scott and basically closed to the public for more than two decades. The Ace Hotel has restored and preserved all the original decorations, murals and mirrored ceiling and Anger’s films will be projected on the theatre’s big screen beneath ornate columns, a soaring gold ceiling and walls in the style of a Spanish Gothic cathedral. (I was there once to see Dr. Gene Scott and even then it was pretty impressive. Restored it should be pretty incredible.)

More information here and tickets here. Apparently it’s nearly sold out, so if you snooze, you’ll lose, be warned.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.17.2014
11:05 am
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The Wormwood Star: Extraordinarily freaky cinematic portrait of occult artist Marjorie Cameron


 
It’s certainly no slight to the late director Curtis Harrington to describe The Wormwood Star, his visually arresting 1955 portrait of occult artist/beatnik weirdo Marjorie Cameron as being “Anger-esque” considering that he’d served as the cinematographer for Kenneth Anger’s Puce Moment and that it stars Cameron, one of Anger’s most well-known cinematic avatars (Cameron famously played “The Scarlet Woman” in Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome and Harrington himself portrayed “Cesare the Somnambulist” in that film. Additionally, Paul Mathison, who played “Pan” in Anger’s druggy occult vision was the art director of The Wormwood Star).

Until The Wormwood Star came out on DVD and Blu-ray recently via Drag City/Flicker Alley as part of The Curtis Harrington Short Film Collection, it was very, very scarce and very difficult to see. You either had to be a friend of Curtis Harrington, probably, or have had a mutual friend with the late director (that’s how I saw it) or maybe see it in a museum. Now it’s on YouTube, of course.

So we’ve established that’s it’s, er, Angery, meaning that there’s more than a fair share of visual flair, drama and a hefty dollop of authentic occult creepiness. Cameron, for those who don’t know, was the wife of rocket scientist/wannabe Antichrist Jack Parsons and a participant in the infamous “Babalon Working” magical rite that also involved future Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. She was a dedicated follower of Aleister Crowley and his occult philosophy of Thelema (“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”).

Curtis Harrington told Cameron biographer Spencer Kansa in his book, Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron:

Before I made the film I’d heard from Renate [referring here to painter Renate Druks] that Cameron had spent some time in the desert trying, through magical means, to conceive a child by the spirit of Jack Parsons without success.  Cameron never spoke of Jack directly, but I do remember feeling sometimes when I talked to her, of her going off into a realm that I didn’t understand at all. It was sort of an apocalyptic thing and it’s there in her poetry.

What you should know as you watch this is that the vast majority of Marjorie Cameron’s paintings were destroyed by her—burned—in an act of ritualized suicide. There are very few pieces by Cameron that have survived—a few paintings and some sketches—and The Wormwood Star is the only record of most of them (outside of the astral plane, natch. What does survive of her estate is represented by longtime New York gallerist Nicole Klagsbrun). Cameron has long been a figure of fascination for many people and I think I can say with confidence that this film meets or even far exceeds any expectations you might have for it.

As with Anger’s films, I deeply appreciate the careful aesthetic balance between beauty and evil and, as such, it’s an extraordinary document of both Marjorie Cameron Parsons’ very essence as a human being and of her creative output. As cinema, it’s a mini-masterpiece that can stand alongside any of Anger’s films, Ira Cohen’s magnificently freaky Invasion of the Thunderbolt Pagoda, Jack Smith’s Normal Love or Yayoi Kusama’s Self-Obliteration.

Below, the seldom-seen short film, The Wormwood Star. If it looks this good on YouTube, it must look really amazing on Blu-ray. Order The Curtis Harrington Short Film Collection on Amazon (I just did).
 

 
Curtis Harrington and Cameron would work together again on 1961’s Night Tide, one of Dennis Hopper’s first starring roles. Her role as the “Water Witch” was brief, but oh so memorable…
 

 
Thank you Spencer Kansa, author of Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.12.2013
04:06 pm
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Get your very own ‘Lucifer Rising’ jacket
05.21.2013
11:21 am
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I was impressed as fuck by Noel Fielding’s clever “dog whistle” homage to Kenneth Anger (and Roy Wood) in the opening credits to his Luxury Comedy TV series (see below), but just imagine seeing someone walking down the street wearing one of these limited edition embroidered “Lucifer Rising” jackets from La Boca:

We’re very excited to have a very limited re-release of our ‘Lucifer’ jacket for Sixpack France. Designed as a tribute to the jacket worn in Kenneth Anger’s 1972 masterpiece Lucifer Rising, the original release sold out long ago, and has since become one or our most requested pieces. This new release is limited to less than 100 worldwide, and we have a few available in our shop now.
Also available in-store exclusively at Citadium Paris.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Lucifer Rising: Jimmy Page’s insane, amazing, unused soundtrack to the Kenneth Anger film
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.21.2013
11:21 am
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