Anger management

Pierrot longing for the moon (copyright Kenneth Anger)

On tuesday I went along to a showing of the Kenneth Anger
film Rabbit’s Moon. After the showing there was a discussion with Dr. Anger about his movies and life. Part of the reason for the showing was the release of the Magick Lantern Cycle by the BFI of his movies on Blu-Ray. This is good news for fans since most of his movies have languished on vhs for years and early DVDs have long been out of print, however if you wanted to see them the net offered plenty of opportunities. This particular film was made on an extremely flammable negative film stock and had originally been filmed in the 1950s but rediscovered by Cinematheque in the 1970s. Kenneth was amazed at its survival and enthused about blu-ray since it will keep his films in circulation. He pointed out the amazing statistic that 90% of silent movies have not survived which reveals how poor our knowledge of early movies is. Will this be the same with ‘art’ films currently made on new technology? How will we even begin to manage HD films? I have noticed that a lot of art researchers are now using this medium and even uploading such films to repositories is daunting in terms of size and time taken. While Pierrot fails in attaining the moon you know he will continue to try.