Main Cast: Kenneth Anger, Bill Seltzer, Gordon Gray
Release Year: 1947
Country: US
Run Time: 20 minutes
Plot
A landmark of both experimental and gay/lesbian filmmaking, Kenneth Anger's film is a bizarre, disturbing dreamscape of violation, rape, and homoerotic sadomasochism. The film opens with Anger, who made this film when he was only 17, awaking from a troubled dream and leaving his house to go on a stroll. He is confronted by a band of buff sailors who proceed to beat, manhandled, and molest him. Recalling other surrealist masterpieces such as Un Chien andalou and Meshes in the Afternoon, this film uses elliptical narrative structure and dream-like visual metaphors and puns. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Anger synopsizes the film thus: "A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night seeking a `light' and is drawn through the needle's eye. A dream of a dream, he returns to bed less empty than before." Adding later, "This flick is all I have to say about being seventeen, the United States Navy, American Christmas, and the Fourth of July."[2]
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.[3]
Don't Smoke That Cigarette (2000) • The Man We Want to Hang (1995-2002) •Anger Sees Red (2004) •Elliott's Suicide (2004) •Mouse Heaven (1986) •Ich Will! (2000-2007)
Lost and Unfinished Films directed
Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat (1941) • Tinsel Tree (1941-1942) •Prisoner of Mars (1942) •The Nest (1943) •Escape Episode (1944-46) •Drastic Demise (1945) •The Love That Whirls (1949) •Maldoror (1951-1952) •Le Jeune Homme et la Mort (1953) •Thelema Abbey (1955) •Histoire d'O (1959-1961)•Senators in Bondage (1976)
