A recent unseen film by Kenneth Anger

Anger is one of the most influential and important filmmakers ever, but his public persona has eclipsed that for years. His classic body of work, which actually runs altogether less than 2 1/2 hours but was made over a period of 30 years, is an achievement that will last beyond him. His last few videos and films have been items that seem like novelties and concepts rather than wicked visual "indulgences" and "trips" like his classic works. They keep showing up on YouTube, so I have to recommend them, if only because they're so hard to see. The latest to crop up on the site is The Man We Want to Hang (2002), which is a montage he made composed entirely of the art of his hero, the "beast" Aleister Crowley. Part one is below; part two is retrievable if you press the URL link below it and follow the poster's link.


Click here if the above doesn't work.

I would recommend you to Scorpio Rising,Anger's masterpiece, on the 'Tube, but the good postings of it have been taken down and the only one up presently is the one (see post below) that slices it into small shards. I recently got to see the film on a big movie screen for the first time (Anger's work lived again in the 1980s, thanks to the Mystic Fire series of VHS releases), and it is a complete mind-blower, which can be enjoyed in almost any fashion it is seen, but it really shouldn't be seen in such short segments....

The YouTube poster with the strangest approach to putting up movies

I am in constant amazement at what people put up on YouTube. In some cases, I am infinitely, eternally grateful to them; in many other cases, I just scratch my head and move along. Here's an example of a person who has spent weeks and possibly months putting stuff up, but may someday get nabbed by the "three strikes" copyright rule that constitutes the sum and substance of YouTube's enforcement policy (it makes no sense, it's not fair, it doesn't actually combat copyright violation in any way, shape, or form — but then again, they don't allow any sort of nudity but permit extreme violence and wild-ass cursing, so who the hell knows what they're up to). This poster is putting up entire feature films, feature films that have actually been released on DVD in the U.S., but is doing it rather oddly: a scene or two at a time. Instead of posting the maximum 10 minutes at a time, or just springing for a director account, where you can post long stretches of video, this person is posting things...ever...so...slowly. His/her specialty is Marianne Faithfull (thus the nick) and Debbie Harry (one of the most glamorously bored performers ever to grace the music world, but I still do love her in her prime). He also puts up entire episodes of Reba, has put up the entirety of Hairspray (the John Waters original), and several Catherine Deneueve movies, including The Hunger and Belle De Jour. All the films look curiously squeezed, and every one of them is represented by several dozen posts (Performance took him/her 4 dozens posts). This is a very dedicated person, but perhaps the times at which this posting-a-few-minutes-at-a-time is positively ANNOYING is when underground films, that are not on DVD, are sliced and diced. Jonas Mekas' portrait of Andy Warhol, Warhol's own Symphony of Sound with the Velvets and Nico, and Kenneth Anger's indelible and pretty much perfect Scorpio Rising are all present — for the moment — on YT, but in little shards that completely the break the films to shit. Thus, I salute this person's dedicated approach, but gotta ask the question: why?

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=mariannefaithfull

UPDATE: Of course, the blade fell, and this poster was thrown off of YT. A shame because it would be great if we could still share some of the material he/she shared (I wonder if the Warhol people were as adamant as the majors — it's happened before....). Putting up entire mainstream-release features? It's only a matter of time....