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Xcèntric 2023-2024

Invocation. The cinema of Kenneth Anger

Audiovisuals

This session takes the form of a twofold invocation: firstly, of Kenneth Anger, a legend of American underground cinema who died last year, and, secondly, the first session in the history of Xcèntric, which took place in 2001.

Out of his ghosts, Kenneth Anger created a kind of cinema-magic that provides viewers with a unique sensorial and physical experience. In this journey from the dreamlike to the mythical that comprises his short completed work, in which elements of popular culture exist side by side with certain countercultural values, sexuality appears, as in pagan times, hand in hand with the sacred, whilst incendiary violence becomes a sublime rite. A Dionysian orgy in Hollywood Babylon in honour of Lucifer, the angel of light and patron of his cinema, to celebrate the age of Aquarius.

Kenneth Anger: Fireworks, 1947, 14'; Scorpio Rising, 1963, 29'; Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, 1954-66, 38'; Invocation of My Demon Brother, 1966-69, 11'; Lucifer Rising, 1966-80, 29'.

16 mm projection.

Copies from Cinédoc Paris Films Coop.

Directors: Kenneth Anger

This activity is part of Xcèntric 2023-2024

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