Lucifer Rising (1966-1980), a film by Kenneth Anger. Colour, 16mm, 28mins.

Filmed between 1966 – 1980 by the self-proclaimed Magus of cinema, KENNETH ANGER. Lucifer Rising is Anger’s portrait of the love generation, the dawning of a new age and morality. Millenias, civilisations and continents unite as the manifestation of an omniscient, immortal force, inspired by the ancient solar religions and conceived with occultist ALEISTER CROWLEY’S vision of the Age of Aquarius – a third Age after Christianity, a third Aeon, the age of HORUS. The films traverses Icelandic volcanoes, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the ancient solar temples of Stonehenge and Externsteine in Germany with a psychedelic soundscape by the controversial BOBBY BEAUSOLEIL (who was involved with the Manson family), who composed the soundtrack with the Freedom Orchestra of Tracy Prison following his incarceration.

Appearing as goddess Lilith, MARIANNE FAITHFULL emerges. The film’s central theme as impersonation of gods, known to Crowley as the Dramatic Ritual, with ISIS and OSIRIS appearing in Egypt invoking the natural elements that conjure the rising of Lucifer, not as devil but as the rebellious angel of Light in John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), the Venus morning star, bringer of Light and ‘patron saint of the visual arts’, says Anger. Anger’s homage and conception of Lucifer as figure of the Rebel Angel, whose message is that the Key of Joy is Disobedience is manifest of Anger’s independent approach to cinema and anarchic spirit in making films first and foremost for himself: for everyone else, they are ‘enigmas to be figured out’.

Text by Sophie Pinchetti.