Looking back at Anger
For three days (Oct. 8-10), Harvard had a brush with Anger — as in Kenneth Anger, the iconic underground filmmaker who made his first visit to the University in a decade. The occasion was a screening festival honoring the 83-year-old director, who is known for his painterly collage of cinematic images, for his rock scores, and for his challenges to social and cinematic boundaries. He spoke before and after screenings on the final two nights of the festival, which was hosted by the Harvard Film Archive (HFA). Anger told the Saturday night audience at the Carpenter Center’s basement theater that he made his first film at age 8, shooting with the “silent, cinematic” 16mm camera that his family saved for vacations. His parents let him use up film that was about to go out of date. Anger owed his parents another career debt. When he was still at Beverly Hills High School, they...