Lucifer Rising + Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

Two surrealist, mythological and psychedelic short films by the singular American director Kenneth Anger.

Lucifer Rising. Dir. Kenneth Anger, 30 mins, US, 1972–1981.

Filmed in a London studio and at sacred sites in Egypt, France, Germany and England, Lucifer Rising was one of Anger’s most elaborate productions. Its assorted cast includes Scottish director Donald Cammell, Marianne Faithfull, and, briefly, Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger’s brother Chris as ancient gods engaged in occult ritual. Based on the teachings of Aleister Crowley, including his interpretation of Lucifer as a bringer of light, Anger’s film remains starkly beautiful and mesmerising with startling edits, featuring an otherworldly score composed in prison by Manson Family member Bobby Beausoleil.

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Dir. Kenneth Anger, 38 mins, US, 1954.

Steeped in the mythology of Aleister Crowley, art nouveau-era decadence and Hollywood artifice, Anger’s astonishing masterpiece unleashes a constellation of imagined gods choreographed by the filmmaker and inspired by one of the bohemian ‘Come as Your Madness’ costume galas hosted by surrealist painter Renate Druks. Inauguration was filmed in the luxurious abode of silent film actor and reclusive impresario Samson De Brier, who plays many of the self-fashioned deities and demons alongside fellow artists Anaïs Nin, Curtis Harrington, Marjorie Cameron and Druks, among others. The film was reworked several times by Anger, once as a dazzling three-screen version which he then condensed to the ‘Sacred Mushroom Edition’ by brilliantly using superimposition to create complex mandala-like images in an ecstatic Babylonian descent.

– Harvard Film Archive