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"Centerpiece Gala"
Wednesday, May 02, 2007 7:30 PM
EAST COAST PREMIERE
Directed by Elio Gelmini
Canada, 2006, video, 72 min
Followed by Centerpiece Party WayOut/Espanola Way
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Ticket Availability
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A force to be reckoned with in the history of independent film, Kenneth Anger finds his energy in the broadest of pop cultural associations—from the sexual fantasies of sailor boys, bikers, and queer macho to the magical forces of nature and the divine. His earliest cinematic visions were fueled by visions of celebrity, sprung out of a youthful imagination under the influence Hollywood glamour.
Author of "Hollywood Babylon", a notorious encyclopedia of gossip about stars’ sex lives, his cinema draws from popular culture to create its own mythology. One of his most well-known films, "Scorpio Rising" (1964), is, in his own words, "a death mirror held up to American culture," and binds together Brando, Hitler and Christ. A subversive dream-like collage that is nonetheless narratively driven, the film is at the same time erotic, sublime, and bitingly critical—a story of glorious self-destruction. His editing strategies speak the otherwise unspoken, and bring to the surface the allusions to sex and death that ground even the most banal artifacts of our culture, such as popular music.
For the uninitiated, "Anger Me" features generous excerpts from Anger’s life works and places Anger in context among his peers in experimental art and film while reminding us of his often overlooked encounters with other film luminaries such as D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, and Jean Cocteau. Tracing Anger’s legacy and his role in shaping the counter-cultural revolution of the sixties, director Elio Gelmini frames Anger as an avant-garde mystic still entranced by the lush spectacles of early Hollywood. With Anger narrating his own life and work, Gelmini’s “Anger Me” almost serves as a filmed autobiography of this extremely private auteur.
A self-proclaimed "independent" his films are darkly erotic and perversely joyous. Anger, a film poet who draws from the language of surrealism and who understands movies as magic steadily migrated away from Hollywood toward the creation of a fascinating and personal language of film that paved the way for more recent developments in queer cinema.
Preceded by "Scorpio Rising", Dir. by Kenneth Anger, US, 1964, 30 min, originally shot on 16mm. The macho world of bikers, full of phallic symbols in chrome mixes with images of the occult, Christian deities and Nazi’s set to a pop soundtrack.
Preceded by "Fireworks", Dir. by Kenneth Anger, US, 1947, 14 min, originally shot on 16mm. 60th Anniversary screening. A young man awakens in a daze, only to follow the bright light that calls to him. A violent homoerotic episode ensues when he meets a gang of sadistic sailors.
Director Elio Gelmini will be present to discuss the film with the audience.
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