 SCORPIO RISING Directed by Kenneth Anger |
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Film Series AMERICAN EXPERIMENTAL FILM KUCHAR AND ANGER RISING FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2000, 7 PM $6 ($3 WALKER MEMBERS) AUDITORIUM MEMBERS PAY HALF PRICE! 
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In the mid-1960s George Kuchar and Kenneth Anger popularized the underground cinema through their use of fantasy, playfulness, and theatricality. Conscious of how their productions mimicked and made fun of Hollywood's seamless camera and editing styles, both were recognized for their ability to satirize evil.
HOLD ME WHILE I'M NAKED
Directed by George Kuchar
Filled with one-dimensional emotions--love, hate, desire, and despair--Hold Me While I'm Naked seems to be at times self-consciously homemade and at others a direct subversion of '50s Hollywood melodramas and horror films. Kuchar plays the director who is shooting a soft-core art film. After his leading lady deserts the project, the act of finding a replacement provides a thin narrative line. 1966, U.S., 17 minutes.
EAUX D'ARTIFICE
Directed by Kenneth Anger
Anger shot this early film at the Gardens of Tivoli in Italy in black and white and printed it on color film stock. To enhance the color, he rephotographed it through a blue filter and then hand-tinted it. The name is a play on the French term for fireworks (feux d'artifice). Eaux d'artifice, if it were an actual phrase in French, would mean "waterworks" or "artificial waters." 1953, U.S., 13 minutes.
SCORPIO RISING
Directed by Kenneth Anger
Scorpio Rising celebrates the free-love generation even as it satirizes the counterculture. Anger edited the film to a jukebox-style series of popular songs, including "Blue Velvet," "Wipe Out," and "Devil in Disguise," and casts an ironic look at rebel motorcyclists and their use of negative and positive icons, such as Hitler and Christ. The bikers make their engines roar and ride their way to pain/pleasure as sexual and sadistic symbols are intercut into the dazing chaos and rhythmic experiences. 1963, U.S., 29 minutes.
INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER
Directed by Kenneth Anger
Invoking Lucifer as the Light God--rather than the devil--Anger creates a film that subverts the traditional one-dimensional distinctions between good and evil. By using the music of Mick Jagger, who represents the same sexual duality presented here as demonic, Anger makes the film even more deliciously complex. This highly charged film also fixes itself in the Vietnam era by underlaying the sound track with the whir of helicopters. 1969, U.S., 11 minutes. Print courtesy Sally Dixon.