I am a terrible memorialist because when the pressure is on everything of note fritters right out of my brain, but we lost one of the greats today -- Kenneth Anger, the pioneering gay artist who was inventing gay iconography in cinema in the 19-fucking-40s -- Fireworks came out in 19-fucking-47, y'all -- has shuffled off this mortal coil and the world sucks (and not in the good way) more because of it. What do you even say about a man this important to our culture that doesn't take an entire book, an entire volume of books, to say? I think I can be forgiven my "durrr" in the face of his accomplishments. Just go watch his films, is all I can say right now. A boxed-set of his "Magick Lantern Cycle" of life-changing short films only costs 21 bucks on Amazon right now and if you're any kind of queer you owe it to yourself to educate your ass. May we all have one-tenth of Anger's bravery and lunacy that we can channel into our lives. What a fucking world if we all did.
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2 comments:
I don't think that photo of KA does him justice. If he doesn't look spooky or fucked up, it's not really KA. His films are unforgettable to me.
I saw Fireworks and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome in the mid 60's and they blew my mind. Fireworks was especially amazing and it came along if I remember correctly around the same time that I was reading John Reachy's City Of Night. And a whole world was opening up in front of me.
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