- Born
- 3 February 1927Santa Monica, California, USA
- Died
- 11 May 2023Yucca Valley, California, USA · aged 96
Kenneth Anger
An avant-garde filmmaker who made openly homoerotic films in the 1940s – and wrote the scandalous “Hollywood Babylon”.
Kenneth Anger grew up in Santa Monica and as a child, he claimed, appeared in a Hollywood film. He began making short films as a teenager.
His film “Fireworks” (1947), a dreamlike, violent and erotic fantasy of a young man and a group of sailors, was one of the first openly homoerotic films in America. It led to an obscenity trial, which Anger won. The sex researcher Alfred Kinsey bought a copy for his institute.
Anger’s films, among them “Scorpio Rising” (1963), mixed pop music, biker culture, homoerotic imagery and the occult; he was a follower of the occultist Aleister Crowley. With their editing to pop songs, they are considered forerunners of the music video and influenced directors such as Martin Scorsese and David Lynch. His book “Hollywood Babylon” (1959), a collection of gossip and scandals about film stars, became a cult classic, although many of its stories were exaggerated or invented.
He spent decades in Europe and the United States, working on films that were often left unfinished. He died in 2023 in California, aged 96.