Fireworks (1947 film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Made one weekend when his parents were away, the film was a surreal, overtly sadomasochistic and homosexual psychodrama that featured Roman-candle phalluses and a sailor-filled men's room. "--Midnight Movies (1983) by Hoberman and Rosenbaum “The most exciting use of cinema I have seen.”--Tennessee Williams |
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Fireworks (1947) is a homoerotic experimental film by Kenneth Anger. Filmed in his parents' Beverly Hills, California home over a long weekend while they were away, it is the earliest of his works to survive. The film stars Anger and explicitly explores themes of homosexuality and sado-masochism.
Anger was arrested on obscenity charges following the release of Fireworks. The case went to the California Supreme Court which declared the film to be art.
Kenneth Anger commented in 1976:
- "It's a personal statement about my own feelings about violence and (a) certain kind of masculinity. Also a treatment of a kind of myth in America which relates to the American sailor. That's part of history now, but the sailor then was a kind of sex symbol on one another level there was a great deal of ambivalence and hostility, latency, and fear in the image.…"
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