American filmmaker and artist Kenneth Anger, whose experimental work “laid the groundwork for avant-garde art of the late 20th century,” has died at the age of 96, art gallery Spruth Magers said Wednesday.
In a statement without date or place of death, the art gallery cited the disappearance of a “dreaming director” whose “cinematic genius and influence will be noted by all who meet his films, words and imagination.”
Born in 1927 in Santa Monica, California, Kenneth Anger is described by The Guardian as a “Hollywood legend” for making “some of the most disturbing, dazzling, crazy and influential films ever made”.
Anger leaves about thirty films, all shorts, made between 1940 and 2013, including Fireworks (1947) and Scorpion Rising (1963).
Fireworks is considered “the first gay narrative film made in the US,” according to Variety magazine, and landed Kenneth Anger an obscenity court case.
Combining themes of homosexuality, the occult, Christianity, and Nazism, Scorpio Rising was noted mainly for its use of music as a main element, as it lacked dialogue like most of his films.
The Guardian writes that the film “may have one of the best pop soundtracks in film history” with musicians such as Elvis Presley, Ray Charles and Ricky Nelson, and that it “later encouraged Martin Scorsese and David Lynch to use pop songs.” tell a story.”
Along with cinema, Kenneth Anger also became famous for the scandalous book Hollywood Babylon (1959), which collected information about stellar scandals in the entertainment industry in the first half of the 20th century, involving, for example, Charles Chaplin, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe.
For the Spruth Magers Gallery, Kenneth Unger’s work “shaped the subculture aesthetic of the 1960s and 1970s, the visual lexicon of pop music, music videos and queer iconography.”
In 2009, Galeria Zé dos Bois, together with Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon and the Serralves Foundation in Porto, honored Kenneth Anger in a program that combined a retrospective of the director’s work, a fine art exhibition and a conference dedicated to his work and a program of concerts.
At the opening of the film cycle in May of that year, Kenneth Anger was at the Cinemateca Portuguesa to present the short films Lucifer Ascending, Pleasure Dome Opening, Fireworks and Their Will!
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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