News for
Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) More at IMDbPro »

ad feedback

2 items from 2012

29 March 2012 7:00 AM, PDT | Bad Lit | See recent Bad Lit news »

It might seem like an obtuse question, but does a film festival that puts “underground” in its name under any sort of obligation to screen only “underground films”? And — as Bad Lit, the self-proclaimed Journal of Underground Film asked a few years ago — who’s deciding what’s an underground film, anyway?

First popularized in the 1960s, the term “underground film” was typically applied to the movies coming out of the New York City avant-garde and experimental scene. More importantly, the term implied that these films had elements that were dangerous to normal society.

Watching an underground film, it was assumed one could witness degenerate acts such as the queer vamping of Jack Smith‘s Flaming Creatures or the black mass rituals of Kenneth Anger‘s Invocation of My Demon Brother, or — hopefully — bare boobs.

Eventually, though, the degeneracy of the ’60s underground film scene gave way to the more formal, »

- Mike Everleth

2 February 2012 6:25 AM, PST | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »

Trailer for The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol 1,

released by Fantoma in 2007

Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer was born on this day in 1927 and if you pay him a call at his official site, you'll find a biographical overview he's got to relish. In 2003, Maximilian Le Cain, writing for Senses of Cinema, cut straight to the chase in his opening paragraph: "Offering a description of himself for the program of a 1966 screening, Kenneth Anger stated his 'lifework' as being Magick and his 'magical weapon' the cinematograph. A follower of Aleister Crowley's teachings, Anger is a high level practitioner of occult magic who regards the projection of his films as ceremonies capable of invoking spiritual forces. Cinema, he claims, is an evil force. Its point is to exert control over people and events and his filmmaking is carried out with precisely that intention."

Then: "Whatever one's view of this belief may be, »

2 items from 2012