This event screened 20th February 2010.

FIREWORKS
PUCE MOMENT
RABBIT’S MOON
EAUX D’ARTIFICE

Shot when the filmmaker was just seventeen, Fireworks (1947, 20 minutes) remains a landmark of both experimental and gay cinema, a homo-erotic dream within a dream in which a young man (played by Anger himself) undergoes a rite of passage through a series of violent and ecstatic encounters. Puce Moment (1949, 6 minutes), a fragment of an unfinished work, offers, in Anger’s words, ‘A lavish coloured evocation of Hollywood now gone, as shown through an afternoon in the milieu of the 1920s film star.’ An intensely personal work, Rabbit’s Moon (1950, 16 minutes) was created in the aftermath of a suicide bid: it’s a fable of the unattainable, combining elements of commedia dell’arte with Japanese myth. A technical and atmospheric masterpiece, Eaux d’Artifice (1953, 12 minutes) is one of Anger’s most purely abstract works: scored to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, a Baroque lady flits in and out of Rome’s Tivoli Fountain until she finally melts into the waters.