KENNETH ANGER
Kenneth Anger, who has died aged 96, was a countercultural polymath, who, while never achieving widespread public recognition, was a significant influence on many who did. He was primarily an experimental filmmaker, but also an occultist and a celebrated purveyor of Hollywood gossip. Anger’s reputation is based on a succession of extraordinary, sensuous short films, starting in the late 1940s with . He was influenced by Maya Deren, Eisenstein, and the surrealists, but more significantly by Hollywood Technicolor epics and silent film, particularly the Lumière brothers, Georges Méliès, and Douglas Sirk. Indeed, he claims to have made his first film appearance back in the classic era of Hollywood, as a child playing the Changeling Prince in the 1935 Warner Brothers film , although this is disputed, with Warner Brothers’ records saying the role was played by a girl named Sheila Brown. Anger’s biographer Bill Landis, however, says: “Anger as a child; visually, he’s immediately
