Kenneth Anger

At 97 years old, Kenneth Anger has this physical status:

Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927) is an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and author.

He has directed almost 40 films since 1937, nine of which have been grouped as the "Magick Lantern Cycle."

His films often mix surrection and occult, and they have been described as containing "elements of erotica, film, psychodrama, and spectacle."

Anger has been described as "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers, and certainly the first whose contribution to the public display of gay rights in the United States, commercial or otherwise," and his "role in making gay history visible in American cinema is impossible to overestimate," with several of them releasing consenting adults in the United States prior to the legalization of homosexual acts.

He has also concentrated on occult subjects in several of his films, after being fascinated by the English gnostic mage and poet Aleister Crowley, and is an adherent of Crowley's Thelema, which Crowley founded. Anger was born in Santa Monica, California, to a middle-class family; the authenticity of this assertion has been challenged.

He began making short films when he was ten years old, but his first film to be nominated, the homogenetic Fireworks (1947), would only be released a decade later.

Personal life

Anger has always been a "highly private individual," although he has given many interviews over the years, with one interviewer, David Wingrove, describing him in 2008 as a "joy." He seems to be a healthier two decades younger than his 78 years of age. He's soft-spoken, immaculately tanned. He refuses to reveal details about his name change from Anglemeyer to Anger in such interviews, according to an interviewer who started the conversation in 2004 that "You're being impertinent." Anger is on my passport, so that's all you need to hear. If I were you, I would stay away from that topic." "I just condensed my name," he said in a 2010 interview. I knew it would be like a mark or a symbol. It's simple to remember." Anger is openly gay. He once boasted that he was "somewhat to the right of the KKK" in his views of black people, bringing him up to sexism criticism, but that was clearly a "Crowley-esque parody." He supports the Tibetan independence movement.

Anger is a registered Thelemite and belongs to the Ordo Templi Orientis, the main Thelemic group. Many of the men he admired as living embodiments of Lucifer, a symbol of the Aeon of Horus in Thelemic philosophy, and had his own name inked onto his chest with the Lucifer tattoo. Anger has expressed an interest in a variety of other faith movements, particularly those that pertain in some manner to occultism. Kenneth, for example, was a lifelong friend of Anton LaVey long before the Church of Satan was established in the 1960s and spent time with him and his family during the 1990s. In addition, LaVey appeared in one of Anger's films, Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) as a devilish priest. Anger regards himself as a "pagan" and denies identifying himself as a Satanist. In contrast to Thelema's "solar" masculinity, he also described Wicca as a "lunar" feminine faith.

Source

Awards

• Maya Deren Award, 1996
• Silver Lake Film Festival Spirit of Silver Lake Award (2000)
• San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award (2001)
• Los Angeles Film Critics Association Douglas Edwards Independent/Experimental Film/Video Award (2002), "for his body of work"; tied with Michael Snow, for *Corpus Callosum
• Anthology Film Archives, Life Achievement Award (2010)