“A Film by Kenneth Anger” — Underground Cinema Tee (1960s–1970s) Few figures shaped underground film and queer visual culture as profoundly as Kenneth Anger. Beginning in the 1940s and reaching cult status in the 60s and 70s, his short films—Fireworks, Scorpio Rising, Lucifer Rising, Invocation of My Demon Brother—blended homoerotic imagery, occult symbolism, pop music, and ritual into a new cinematic language that felt forbidden, hypnotic, and fiercely personal. The simple credit line “A Film by Kenneth Anger” became a signature, appearing at the start of works that influenced everyone from Martin Scorsese and David Lynch to punk, goth, and industrial subcultures. It signaled cinema as spell, cinema as confession, cinema as queer myth-making—far outside Hollywood, yet deeply embedded in the culture.
