Kenneth Anger - Film als magisches Ritual / Magier des Untergrundfilms (1970) dir. Reinold E. Thiel

This is a super-rare one hour documentary about Kenneth Anger made for West German TV (WDR, who also had partly financed “Lucifer Rising“) in 1970 that will give ecstasies to any aficionado. Not only does this include the (to my humble knowledge) earliest filmed interview with Anger, it also features stunning making-of-footage of “Lucifer Rising“ in London and Avebury Henge showing the director at work, mostly behind the camera himself with a very small, if any crew. The only such footage either, as far as I know. Appearing as Lucifer is the otherwise undistinguished Leslie Huggins, who judging by his looks would also have pleased Pasolini I guess. British painter Sir Francis Rose makes a brief appearance as “Lord Chaos“ and during his scene utters a sentence which is silent/lip-mouthed only in the final movie: “Have I seen you before?“ The interview scenes are quite weird in their own way: Anger insisted to build a sort of altar first, full of little dragon figures. He basically hides behind it, dressed in a red silk “magician“ robe, careful not to lose grip on his self-stylization. (A bit like Leni Riefenstahl maybe: “I’ll tell you all you want to know, but not in that f*cking light!“) Overall he appears rather shy, reclusive and reluctant to talk too much. There are lengthy excerpts from Anger’s previous films such as “Invocation of My Demon Brother“, “Fireworks“ and “Scorpio Rising“, partly with different soundtracks. “Puce Moment“ is presented as being partly shown to the public in this programme for the first time ever; there are lovely sketches drawn by Anger for the abandoned project “Puce Women“ (Curtis Harrington was involved as well); there is also yet uncut material from “Rabbits’s Moon“ (including clapperboards) and seemingly a few color shots from the lost “Thelema Abbey“ film (??). It is claimed that the latter was broadcast by British TV in 1953, but given the controversial subject matter (Crowley’s “erotic“ frescos) this is highly unlikely. Strangely enough even after some naughty scenes from “Scorpio Rising“ and the notorious beating sequence from “Fireworks“ no mention is being made of the rather obvious homosexual angle at all. It is likely that Anger himself wanted to de-emphasize this and talk rather about impersonal aspects such as initiations, invocations, tribal rituals etc. Also discussed are the true meaning of the Swastika, the use of sacred drugs, Aleister Crowley, George Méliès and of course Golden Age Hollywood. The comment is sometimes a bit silly: this is seemingly made by guys who are fascinated like boys by all this strangeness, and try a bit too hard to proof how “open-minded“ and at the same time respectably serious they are. To be fair, they did a quite good job for their time and circumstances: f.e. Crowley is not once called a “satanist“ as the usual sensationalistic branding in TV goes. And then again, this was 1970, so West German audiences needed to be carefully introduced into the cultural merits of Demon Brothers and gay motorcycle gangs waving Nazi flags... unmentioned goes rather difficult-to-explain-stuff such as whatever happened to the previous actor who was to appear as Lucifer (he joined the Manson Family and...) Unfortunately, whenever Anger starts talking, a German overvoice sets in and translates what he says. While still much of the original sound is included, many parts get lost. So I had to fill in and re-translate into English what Anger probably phrased differently and better. Whenever the German voice-over merely repeats what he just said or is followed by the original wordings, I mostly passed the subs. IMDB gives the film’s title as “Magier des Untergrundfilms“ (Magician of Underground Cinema), while my copy says it is called “Film als magisches Ritual“ (Film as Magical Ritual). Also the name of the director Reinold E. Thiel is spelled differently Anger reportedly wasn’t very happy about this, as the film doesn’t follow his own script how it should haven been like, but rather comments on his constant need to keep control and avoid spontanousness.