Lucifer Rising

While editing today I decided to try and track down some of the Keneth Anger we talked about last class. I found Lucifer Rising on youtube so I decided to check it out. I'm pretty sure that you can also watch puce moment on youtube if anyone is interested. Anyway, I really enjoyed the film. I thought the costumes were beautiful and the settings were great not only because of their history but also because of how Anger shot them. I'm not sure if he used a certain kind of film or if he just manipulated it somehow, but at certain moments there was a monochromatic rich aqua colored look to the film. Anger also overlaps  images on top of each other but not by double exposing. An example of this is when Anger places a cropped image of lighting over a mountain. I'm curious to know how Anger does this, and my only guess is an optical printer.

The content of the film is similar to The Inauguration of The Pleasure Dome except I find the Crowley influences more obvious here. For me, the title foreshadows a very dark film that might be similar to The Inauguration but instead Anger's fantasy like characters seem very excited for Lucifer's arrival. These characters all seem to be like little pagan faeries living around the tombs of Egypt and stonehenge awed by gods that were once worshipped in those places. It was a very strange experience to watch the film because I knew I was watching an experimental film, but I also felt like I was in some dreamy, non sensical version of The Omen or Rosemary's Baby. It was very beautiful and exciting. It also didn't feel too long unlike The Inauguration. The whole thing was 28 minutes, but if that's too long I would check out Puce Moment.