Kenneth Anger’s
Invocation of my Demon Brother and Scorpio Rising

Invocation of my Demon Brother
Kenneth Anger
USA 1969, 16mm, 11:09 min, col.
Format: AVI
Size: 133.8 mb
Source: UbuWeb Film
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Note: The film have an Ogg Vorbis mode 3+ audio stream (a very poor choice by the encoder!) that will make most of you unable to have sound with this film. Hopefully UbuWeb will solve the problem, perhaps the soundtrack will be online soon (?). Advanced users (not recommended for newbies) may try to solve the problem by installing Vorbis Ogg ACM Codec or if you can find this pack (right-click on vorbisacm.inf and select ‘install’). .at your own risk. The video, however, will play.

Mac Users: You might need the VLC Player to view the .avi files.

In 1967, the footage for Anger’s Lucifer Rising was allegedly stolen by Anger’s “Lucifer”, Bobby Beausoleil, who was later convicted for his participation in the Manson murders (Beausoleil denies stealing the footage to this day). Anger went into a deep depression and publicly renounced filmmaking via a full-page “In Memoriam” in The Village Voice. He later moved to London and met up with Mick Jagger and the Stones. By this time, Anger had begun editing two other versions of what was to be Lucifer Rising, although by the final edit it had taken on a very different form, which led to the incarnation of Invocation, a mind-bending collage of sonic terror and subversion and fast paced ritual ambiance which found the union of the circle and the swastika, a swirling power source of solar energy. Mick Jagger contributed a suitably eerie soundtrack with a newly acquired synthesizer.

It is Anger’s most metaphysical film: here he eschews literal connections, makes the images jar against one another, and does not create a center of gravity though which the collage is to be interpreted, as the images of Christ could be interpreted through the actions of the motorcyclists in Scorpio or as the images of Crowley could be interpreted through the ritual of Inauguration. Thus deprived of a center of gravity,the very image has equal weight in the film, and more than ever before in an Anger film, the burden of synthesis falls upon the viewer. The most demonic of Anger’s films, as well as the most fast moving. –From UbuWeb

Additional reading:
Magick in Theory and Practice: Ritual Use of Colour in Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother
By Deborah Allison
Critical Essay on Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother
By Chris Morrison

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Scorpio Rising
Kenneth Anger
USA 1963, 16mm, 28:27 min, col.
Format: AVI
Size: 194.8 mb
Source: UbuWeb Film
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“A death mirror held up to American culture. Brando, bikes, black leather.”

Decried as obscene upon its initial release, this short documentary-style feature contains no dialogue and rapidly inter-cuts images against a score of slyly selected pop tunes, predating the advent of the music video by a decade and a half. Delving into the homoerotic world of bikers, Anger focuses his camera on Scorpio (Bruce Byron), a leather-wearing, crystal methamphetamine-snorting bad boy who is alternately compared to Jesus Christ, Adolf Hitler and the Devil, depending on his activities. Scorpio is seen strutting his stuff, racing his bike, vandalizing a church and attending a rowdy party where a fellow reveler is tortured and humiliated by the bikers. Through it all, Anger draws clear parallels between Scorpio’s crowd, sadism and homosexuality, with alternately subtle and obvious montages depicting snippets of other films, comic strips, plenty of gleaming phallic chrome, and symbols like the Nazi swastika. Considered by many to be one of the first post-modern films, the film was a controversial hit only on the underground circuit, but its style greatly influenced a generation of popular filmmakers, most notably director Martin Scorsese. –From: UbuWeb

Also check out the Kenneth Anger Feature in Grey Lodge Occult Review #14

Note from UbuWeb:
These films is presented for noncommerical and educational use only.
It has generously been lent to us by re: voir.
You may purchase a high quality version of these films directly from re: voir.

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