Collection: Kenneth Anger

Kenneth Anger (1927–2023) was an American filmmaker, author and occultist whose experimental films, produced from the 1940s onwards, were foundational to the development of underground cinema and queer film culture. His works — including Fireworks (1947), Scorpio Rising (1963) and Lucifer Rising (1972–80) — combined homoerotic imagery, occult symbolism, pop music and biker culture to produce films of hallucinatory intensity that operated entirely outside Hollywood conventions. Anger was a central figure in the American avant-garde and his influence on subsequent generations of filmmakers, musicians and artists has been extensive. He was also the author of the Hollywood Babylon books, scandalous accounts of the secret lives of Hollywood stars. His work entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and has been exhibited and screened internationally. He was included in the History of Storytelling archive section of Know Who You Are at Every Age at the Bronx River Art Center in 2014.