The MAK Center, in partnership with the University of Southern California School of Cinema Television, presented The Man We Want to Hang, a three-day retrospective of the avant-garde films of Kenneth Anger.  Titled after Anger’s latest work—which had its Los Angeles premiere at the series—the retrospective presented major works from throughout Anger’s career, divided into three programs.  The first program screened at USC, October 10.  The series the continued and concluded at the Schindler House October 11 and 12.  Anger himself introduced the Friday program at the MAK Center.

Program 1 focused on Anger’s early work: Eaux D’Artifice (1953); Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954); and Puce Moment (1949). Program 2 looked at key films from the 1960s, as well as Anger’s earliest surviving work: Fireworks (1947), Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969); Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965); Scorpio Rising (1963). Program 3 presented Anger’s later works, including the Los Angeles premiere of The Man We Want to Hang. Other films shown this evening were Rabbit’s Moon (1972) and Lucifer Rising (1980).

Anger has consistently produced work that is provocative and transgressive, engaging numerous subjects considered taboo, such as gay sexuality and the occult.  Imagistic, densely symbolic, and loosely-narrative in form, Anger’s short films (none is longer than 38 minutes) are shot in 16 mm., rarely employ dialogue and often feature Anger himself. Active in Los Angeles’ underground culture of the 1950s and 60s, Anger was a frequent guest at the Schindler House at the time.  Several of his films received their first screening at the Schindler House, consistent with the premiere of The Man We Want to Hang.