The films of Kenneth Anger (Magick Lantern Cycle)

It's really Fireworks and then everything else for me.

Me as well. I just showed my friend "Scorpio Rising" tonight and realized once again how nothing even comes close to "Fireworks"

scorpio rising is pretty dull all things considered

tho my vote goes to inauguration...

http://media.walkerart.org/2599480.jpg

Fireworks is great. Very personal, intimate, a beautiful little film.
Scorpio Rising is another beast entirely. It's greatness is in it's grand scope.

Scorpio Rising for me too... The soundtrack is outstanding.

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The mysterious/pseudonymous psych-folk soundtrack for Puce Moment is pretty good too.

dammit, I have the Vol I disc from the library but I am not gonna watch em all before tomorrow.

I do prefer Fireworks to Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, not sure where Scorpio Rising fits.

Luficer Rising ftw

Good soundtrack for that one too - put together under difficult conditions.

Another one for "Inauguration . ." The Janáček "Glagolitic Mass" is inseparable from that movie for me, and I love them both. I read there's an alternative soundtrack by ELO, which I don't even like to think about.

?! where did you read that? Seems unlikely. I don't recall that being mentioned in the DVD box set notes.

There is/was an ELO soundtrack for Inauguration...It was the first version I saw back in the days of the Scala cinema club in London.

Scorpio Rising by a good margin.

xpost: I think the ELO soundtrack was referred to in the Bill Landis bio. No idea how it came about, and it must be an interesting story. As you say, it's an unlikely pairing.

Details from Wikipedia: Anger used ELO's 1st album "Eldorado" - they didn't record it for him!

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OMG Kenneth Anger just filmed MISSONI's F/W 10-11 ad campagin, wtf??

http://www.vogue.it/en/magazine/daily-news/2010/07/missoni-adv

hahahaha WAHT

looks great tho I gotta say

Apparently he plays theremin in some band...

saw him on some interview panel on one of those 'disinformation' videos. i dunno, he seemed kind of oddly reserved and well, kind of boring, which seemed strange considering the odd life that he has lived, circles he has traveled in

Oh! This poll is helpful. I have been trying to decide where to start. I think I might have seen Fireworks.... I've had a KA DVD from Netflix for MONTHS, but have been lazy about watching anything except Futurama lately.

John Waters' frequent mentions of KA always make me feel a little guilty for neglecting him.

Love that new film. Honestly, I love any and all Anger.

If I had seen this poll I would have voted Scorpio fwiw.
Great use of the Everly Brothers.

thanks for sharing that stevie, looks gd to me - love how his aesthetic hasn't really changed since the 1940s, still rippling w that beautiful dayglo magick

heyo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L80h7TN62SI

apparently I am going to be the "projectionist" at this:
https://www.facebook.com/events/882228311819538/

Bruce Ackley, cool!

Does being 'the projectionist' involve showing the films, or performing the role of an Anger-like character who can astrally project?

it means I am showing up with my DVDs and running the projector (I guess?) I am not cool/rich enough to own actual film prints of this stuff.

Cool! I love Kenneth Angers stuff, all of it has a nice dreamlike quality to it. I would totally go to this, even though I think the music is very much a large part of the experience of his films.

The doo-wop soundtrack for "Rabbits Moon" gives it a very particular feel to it. At least for me it feels like the alternate soundtrack (the amazing glam stomp "It Came in the Night") kind of brings it to another place. It's still in that mid-century rock n roll camp cashed with old Hollywood and pre-war decadence. The "Puce Moment" soundtrack is a pair of incredible lost psych rock classics that I've always dreamed of covering. Scorpio Rising is proto punk and proto mixtape culture.

Have fun at that show! I hear that Kenneth Anger plays theremin so it'll probably be cool to hear one alongside his films.

yeah there is absolutely *zero* info about the "Puce Moment" soundtrack, which drives me crazy. I mean there's no way that stuff is from the 50s, it has to have been added later. (I think this has been discussed elsewhere iirc).

in my defense, when I was contacted about this I pointed out that these were NOT silent films. but eh, you know...

Jonathon Halper, what was your story

WFMU has some comment board rumors: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/02/puce_moment.html

When I saw Puce Moment for the first time at the NYFF last fall, the soundtrack (and the film) entranced me, but not until now did I realize that I'd already heard part of it thanks the Lazily Spun... no wonder it stuck in my subconsciousness so much. And to Domenica, the recordings are definitely not from 1949. Anger often re-edited his films and used different soundtracks. According to an old post on the Frameworks list, the original soundtrack was by Verdi. Sitney's book Visionary Film says that Puce Moment, itself a fragment of an uncompleted film, was pulled from distribution in 1963, so I'd imagine that was the last time Verdi was used. Sitney later writes: "The first sign of the rejuvenation of [Anger's] film-making in the 1970s was his completion of Invocation of My Demon Brother, which includes material from the original Lucifer Rising. Then he released Puce Moment, synchronized to a new song...." Assuming this refers to Halper, this dates the current soundtrack to the late-'60s/early-'70s, just as it sounds. The Lazily Spun probably heard it on the VHS release of the Magick Lantern Cycle, judging from the reference to the MLC in the notes of the Terrascope compilation.

I'd love to find out more about Halper. Who knows, maybe the name was just an alias for someone on the run from the law: the history of Anger's films are filled with such stories, and being associated with him often destined you to an outrageous, tragic, and mysterious fate, or so it seems sometimes.

Posted by: Sam | February 12, 2007 at 10:11 PM

J.H WROTE THESE SONGS IN EDINBURGH CIRCA 1969,WHEN THEY WERE RECORDED????
J.H WAS THE REAL OCCULT DEAL!!!
HE MADE MANY THINGS HAPPEN!!!!
HE PISSED OFF SOME HIGH BEINGS!
OTHERS LOVED HIM AND PROTECTED HIM!
I GUESS ANGER WAS ONE OF THOSE.
HE DID AT THE TENDER AGE OF EARLY 20 SOMETHING!
RETIRE FROM THE WORLD,AND THEN LIVED UNDER THE PROTECTION OF A TIBETAN LAMA.
HE AT ONE POINT HAD A BAND CALLED DEVOLUTION,CIRCA 1969-1970.AND PLAYED IN MENTAL HOSPITALS ETC IN THE EDINBURGH AREA OF SCOTLAND.

Posted by: THE LOST CABINET | April 18, 2008 at 06:43 PM

For anyone interested, there is a blog post from 2012 of an old associate of Jonathan Halper, from; http://www.wowvondahlenberg.com/1/post/2012/04/1971so-no-supprise-to-meet-jonathon-back-stage-at-the-ravi-shankar-gigafter-sitting-on-the-floor-cross-legged-in-the-half-lotus-position-just-five-feet-away-from-the-master-for-the-whole-gigjust-as-i-ran-into-him-backstage-at-the-cat-stevens-g.html

"1971..So no supprise to meet Jonathon Halper back stage at the Ravi Shankar gig, after I sat cross legged in the half lotus position, just five feet away from the master for the whole gig....just as I ran into him backstage at the Cat Stevens gig. 22/04/2012
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1971..So no supprise to meet Jonathon back stage at the Ravi Shankar gig....after sitting on the floor cross legged in the half lotus position, just five feet away from the master for the whole gig....just as I ran into him backstage at the Cat stevens gig. But this reminds me, Jonathon for all his mysticism and magical thinking ''My mind is not the same'' was no slouch when it came to self promotion...he in fact ran a fanzine for a while if i am not mistaken...and was trying to interview Cat Stevens for his fanzine. There seems to be some tension about revealing these things about someone who has changed and moved on...but the truth is the truth and history is history....and my art is my art. So read it here for the first time..... Jonathan had a band called 'Devolution' although mainly he played solo, and performed at local mental health institutions like asylums and stuff...but as I say he was no slouch, and shortly after the Ravi Shankar gig, he put on a gig, i can't remember where it was, I think not the Traverse theatre, as in my memory it was too big for the Traverse...but he leafleted and got all the Edinburgh musical cognoscenti to attend.....but being simultaneously shy...he didn't put on his best performance and they all left after the first song, or at least before the end of the second song. But those folk whoever they were, will not admit to walking out of a gig by a man who became a legend and added his tunes to the films of the inventor of the music video; will they! This short clip above is from three and a half years earlier; but if you are quick you will see Jimi Hendrix in the audience. "

Posted by: Jarrod | May 14, 2012 at 07:22 AM

HE DID AT THE TENDER AGE OF EARLY 20 SOMETHING!

lol

I transcoded the chords on an old blog post if anyone is interested in learning the songs:
http://rabbitscgi.blogspot.com/2009/04/music-of-kenneth-angers-puce-moment.html

I wonder how those two crossed paths. Anger was in Scotland in the early 70s to see Page...

It's kind of funny there are so many people wondering who/where this guy is when his song says "I am a hermit". Most popular rumor seems to be the guy is a hermit and went to live in a Scottish monastery or something in the early 70s. At least going by tweets from random people saying they asked Anger about it. I imagine even he doesn't know where this guy is or if he is still alive.

I think it would be less mysterious if the stuff had ever been released on a label, or there was some documentation that he had done shows, who he'd played with etc. I get the irony but this lack of other information is unusual.

live sdtk thing is tonight in SF:
https://www.facebook.com/events/882228311819538/

Jonathan Halper (Leaving my old life behind/I am a hermit) has been uncovered.

I always assumed it was a Kenneth Anger bit of myth-making that Jonathan Halper disappeared into a tibetan monastery, but apparently he really did live at the Samye Ling monastery in Scotland for a while.

From a school reunion booklet in 2011:

Jonathan Halper (1957-1967) married his Tibetan bride
Phurbu Lhamo at St. John’s Church Hyde Park,
London, on 22nd March 2011. The guests included
Old Brentwood Peter Croft (1961-68) and two monks in
bright red robes from the Kagyu Samye Dzong Tibetan
Buddhist Centre in London SE 16 where Jonathan is a
regular volunteer (as well as being a sacristan at St.
John’s). The bride, who wore a traditional turquoise
Tibetan dress, was born in India like many Tibetans since
the Chinese invasion of their country. She is studying
administrative management in the UK.

Jonathan and Lhamo were both moved by the religious and
emotional depth of the occasion and followed it with a
Buddhist wedding blessing on 8th April. This was
administered by Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche, founder of
the Samye Ling Monastery on the banks of the River Esk in
the Scottish lowlands.

Jonathan explains: “Although the
church service was quite powerful, the short wedding
blessing was ‘overcoming’ especially as I had known Akong
Rinpoche since the age of 18. From 1972 to 1991, I spent
a lot of time as a lodger in his guest house in Dumfries.”

Jonathan Halper is a lapsed composer who discovered
recently that two tracks made in 1968 with fellow Old
Brentwood Tony Brazier (1961-67) had been used in a film.
Peter Croft explains: “As a teenager, Jonathan wrote and
played many songs but in his early twenties gave up music
making. Not bothering with the records of his work, he
thought his many compositions had been entirely lost.

“Amazingly, he discovered recently that the two tracks had
been used by the avant-garde American film-maker
Kenneth Anger as the soundtrack for his short film ‘Puce
Moment.’ What a great achievement! He and Tony deserve
our applause even if it comes 40 years later.

The film can be seen in a DVD called “Magick Lantern
Cycle”, published by the British Film Institute. Google
‘Jonathan Halper’ or see http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/
acatalog/info_12869.html. Jonathan has lost touch with
Tony and asks that anyone in contact with him should pass
on the news

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/bobbysixer/jonathan%20halper_zpsuuuvwobr.jpg

i read Hollywood Babylon this week. it was really good. its really interesting how intertwined the history of all this stuff is, that prohibition and the birth of film industry and celebrity culture and the scandal/gossip/tabloid media, etc. all sort of grew up together in the early 20th century. he traces how the Hollywood legend began, the hedonism and excesses of the new glamor class pushing back against censorship and calls for decency, how some stars would be destroyed by scandal and others could weather it. some stars were ruined because their diaries leaked to the press and destroyed their public image, now something many in the general public relate to. the struggle between public perception, temperance movements, self-regulation, and classic entertainment industry exploitation. it's fascinating and basically told blog style like a Gawker feed of the 20th century.

there are so many tragic stories, real life heroes and villains, people that sacrificed it all and lost it to the invention of Sound Film or the Great Depression or Anti-Commie Blacklisting movements. Francis Farmer's story in particular was shocking and tragic and all too familiar, the silencing of her as an outspoken woman, the demonization of substance abuse, the need to sacrifice a real person's life to the God of Good Clean Entertainment. amazing book and very ahead of its time - 100 years later the social/celebrity/pop moralizing is so mainstream we indulge in it in our pre-coffee dream states.

the story of Lana Turner was a super crazy. she is trapped in violent affair with an LA gangster and he tries to kill her when her 14 year old daughter kills him with a knife in the stomach. the court finds that it was Justifiable Homicide!

Turner met Johnny Stompanato during the spring of 1957, shortly after ending her marriage to Barker. After she discovered his ties to the Los Angeles underworld (in particular, his association with gangster Mickey Cohen), she tried to break off the affair out of fear of bad publicity. Stompanato was not easily deterred, however, and over the course of the following year, they carried on a relationship filled with violent arguments, physical abuse, and repeated reconciliations.

On the evening of April 4, 1958, after the Oscar telecast which she had attended without him, Stompanato arrived at Turner's rented house at 730 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills. The two began arguing heatedly in the bedroom, during which Stompanato threatened to kill Turner, her daughter, and her mother. Fearing that her mother's life was in danger, Turner's fourteen-year-old daughter, Cheryl, grabbed a kitchen knife and ran to Turner's defense. According to testimony provided by Turner at the coroner's inquest, Cheryl, who had been listening to the couple's fight behind the closed door, stabbed Stompanato in the stomach when Turner attempted to usher him out of the bedroom. "(At first) I thought (Cheryl) hit him in the stomach," Turner testified in court. The killing was ultimately deemed a justifiable homicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lana_Turner#The_Stompanato_killing

https://tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T577/LAConfidential02.jpg

I have been watching Kenneth Anger films. I haven't seen Fireworks yet. loved what Ed Lowry had to say about Scorpio Rising: "Clearly, Scorpio Rising has had its influence, from the found-footage collages of Bruce Conner to the pop-flash sound and color imagery of American Graffiti . Yet the film remains one of a kind in terms of the immediacy and savagery of its critique. Anger's manipulations of the culturally overloaded imagery of Nazism, sadomasochism, and the occult finally result in a film which refuses to conform to any dominant, edifying reading whatsoever—an almost unparalleled achievement which should earn Scorpio Rising an enduring place in the artistic annals of the 1960s, a decade remembered for the challenges it posed to ruling ideology."

Renting an Anger collection from my college media center was a pretty monumental moment for me. Scorpio Rising in particular. Wanted to show it to everyone.

really enjoyed Lucifer Rising. didn’t realize Anger was obsessed with Crowley/Thelema. The story of the age of Horus overtaking the ages of Osiris and of Isis was beautiful. The imagery at the end was particularly moving - the ushabtis dropped in the Nile, the green-and-pink re-imaging of “Just Imagine”, the thunderstorm at Stonehenge, the flying saucer over Karnak representing the coming of Horus, the script of Lucifer Rising being burnt behind the Colossi of Memnon. Not sure at the moment what I think of Bobby Beausoleil's soundtrack

want to see Fireworks and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

re: Scorpio Rising, I was wondering about the christian film sequences. In the commentary Anger said the religious footage was delivered to his address accidentally, was supposed to sent to a nearby Sunday school! He decided to include it

That Halloween party scene toward the end (intercut with the scenes from The Last Journey to Jerusalem) was really something.

(his keeping the film does make me skeptical of his ethics)

Tickled by the idea of being skeptical of a Satanist's ethics.

(Before anyone else says it, I'm aware that KA doesn't consider himself a Satanist).

Damn, was so glad this wasn't a rip BUMP...

didn’t realize Anger was obsessed with Crowley/Thelema

weird, I feel like this is THE most famous thing about him (well ok besides "Hollywood Babylon")

These films are incredible, some of my all-time faves.

although I’ve read a bunch about Crowley, Thoth, Kabbalah, I never got around to learning anything about Anger (or seeing any of his films) until this past week!

you might find this interesting

https://arthurmag.com/tag/kenneth-anger/

key bit re: the "exorcism" of the Pentagon in 1967

ED SANDERS
Kenneth Anger was burning something down there and making snake sounds at whomever should try to come near. He told me that he had been inside the Pentagon weeks ago to bury something.

KENNETH ANGER
I just walked right in. I had studied how the Pentagon staff were dressed, and I was just like them. I wore a dark blue conservative suit. I even had a small American flag on my lapel.

I was attacking Mars, the god of War. He’s still our ruling god—if you think Mars is an extinct thing from the antique past that we can just laugh at now, forget it. Mars is still here. That is not my opinion, but my knowledge. Mars is a terrifying but sobering vision. I have had this vision of Mars—you have to do all the things at certain times of the year, and then he does come through. And he’s about 500 feet tall, he’s NOT very handsome, he’s very strong, he’s armored, he’s bearded in a scraggly way, he’s got the fiercest eyes of any of the gods. He makes Jupiter—Jove—look benign and effete in comparison. But Mars is kind of childish—that’s why it’s so hard to get to him. He just loves bloodbaths. This is his thing. He does it very well. And he’s always thinking up new ways to do hideous things to the human race. This is his FUN. He’s the god of War. And he’s been alive since there were humans in tribes. War is the most consistent activity of the human animal. For whatever reason, some good, and a lot bad, we’ve been doing it as a race since the cave days. Of course, some wars are justified, like World War II, fighting the Nazis, I can’t think of a better cause. But Mars has nothing to do with being fair. Mars loves bloodshed, and he is a force that’s still operating in the world—it’s a force that according to modern thinking is irrational, but nevertheless there. Freud would have called it the unconscious or something but I believe that these are actual living entities. Not ‘living’ in the way like humans living and breathing, [but] living in a way that are much beyond our capacity, because they’ll never die.

In a personal sense, men more than women have a big problem with Mars. Most soldiers from the beginning of time have been men, and still are. And the Pentagon is controlled by men. The Pentagon itself is sort of an occult shape—like a five-sided collapsed star. [In the Crowley tradition, Mars’ number is five and its color is red.—Ed.] I’m a pagan. Mars doesn’t terrify me because I’ve come to understand him as a living entity. But just because Mars is so powerful doesn’t mean you always have to give in to him. You have to [put him in his place]: ‘Alright buster, calm down. You’re not the only star in the firmament. Enough already.’ That sort of thing. And [so I attacked Mars] in an abstract way.

I had a map of the Pentagon. I went into every single men’s room and left—in a place where it was bound to be discovered, usually on the seat where anyone using that stall would have to see it, not on the floor, of course! —a talisman which was written on parchment paper, drawn in india ink. Each one was drawn individually using one of Crowley’s talismans as my guide. I’m sure no one in the Pentagon could figure out what this thing meant. There was nothing like “War is bad” on it. There weren’t even English words. They probably could figure out it was something occult…they know about those things, and they have a reference library.

I went from one Men’s Room to the next, I didn’t stop until I had scattered all 93 of my talismans—because 93 is a sacred number for Crowley. Then I walked out, it was all very inconspicuous. The security guard looked at me and gave me a nice look, like we’re all looking after each other. If I’d been stopped and put in handcuffs that would’ve been unpleasant. That isn’t the way I want to spend my time in Washington—I had a ticket to the opera for later that week.

ED SANDERS
I remember after we’d done “Out, Demons, Out,” I went down under the truck and there was this guy from Newsweek trying to hold a microphone close to Anger. It looked like he was burning a pentagon with a Tarot card or a picture of the devil or something in the middle of it. In other words the thing we were doing above him, he viewed that as the exoteric thing and he was doing the esoteric, serious, zero-bullshit exorcism. So I went along with that.

KENNETH ANGER
I don’t burn Tarot cards, I respect them too much. [What I was doing] was saying Ed Sanders and the Fugs are a bunch of crap, this isn’t the way to fight a war. After all, I was there to protest the war. I knew what I was doing. It was a Crowley-type ritual.

They’d brought in a truck, decorated in flowers, making it like a float in the Rose Parade. They were just showoffs, they were putting their own agenda on this other thing. I found that offensive too because it wasn’t the point. Naturally flowers are nice and peace is nice and all that, but that’s not quite the point of what’s happening. And they were doing their omni hare krishna chant chant, peace peace, whatever, the kind of crap that Lennon and Yoko used to chant. People could say they were harmless and meant well, well I’m sorry they may have meant well [but] it didn’t do any good. In my view, there’s ways to [demonstrate] that are correct and there are ways to do it that are not correct. All the singing and flowers and chanting and all that crap was not the right way.
The focus should on the objective of the march, not on Hey! Me! I’m here! Since it was close to Halloween, some people came dressed in costume, or carrying inappropriate signs, and I found that totally inappropriate, because it’s saying Look at me, don’t think about what we’re here for. The kind of energy that can be generated by a march can be dissipated by just turning it into a sideshow. And I see this happen over and over with American marches. Like people who try to protest in the nude: this is NOT appropriate for anything. Because public nudity happens to be against the law—and it probably should be, because most people are ugly! [laughs] The few Adonises and Venuses around, I’d love if they would parade in the nude. But most people could use a little concealment.

thanks, it’s interesting how the ideas of so many different people came together for that pentagon action

I ended up ordering the Magick Lantern Cycle dvds so I can watch the rest of the films

you will not be disappointed

“i can't wait to die and go to hell, and the first thing i'm gonna do is kick disney in the balls!" - kenneth anger (1927 - 2023) r.i.p legend 🖤🌹 pic.twitter.com/hpjpRRHiOa

— lucifer rising (@drkkwv) May 24, 2023

Shit, but I knew this was coming,

Managed to snag Hollywood Babylon 2 at a second hand book shop a month or so ago,

Saw him introduce a few of his films at the BFI around 2008.

total Legend.

recommending this for some lesser known Anger details.

http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/youmustrememberthispodcastblog/2015/6/30/charles-mansons-hollywood-part-6-kenneth-anger-and-bobby-beausoleil

RIP doesn't seem quite right tbh.

Rest In (Magickal) Power?

Go with Horus?

KDITBIP (kick Disney in the balls in peace)

As I've been re-watching his films recently, the thing that really stands out is that each film seems to inhabit its own enclosed and totally consistent universe, an effect that must be nearly impossible to achieve with minimal budget and crew.

wow

Gonna have to rewatch Puce Moment a few dozen times tonight in tribute

Also important to remember that Scorpio Rising was something of a First Amendment milestone:

"When Scorpio Rising was – we've forgotten, in a sense, that it was a groundbreaker, legally…The case had to go to the California Supreme Court to be freed and then it became, like, a landmark case of redeeming social merit. That was the phrase that was used to justify that it wasn't pornography. And, indeed, there's nothing pornographic about it. Somebody had to break the ice and have that kind of case at that time to establish the freedom, because, before then, the police could seize anything they wanted to..."

So I assume every Batman director since at least Tim Burton has closely watched Scorpio Rising, if only as a study in hypermasculinity and machine fetishism?

(I had previously only seen Fireworks, Eaux d'Artifices, and Puce Moment.)