Today it is reported that avant-garde filmmaker, iconoclast, sexual free-thinker, and notorious slinger of juicy Hollywood gossip, Kenneth Anger, has died at the age of 96. Openly gay in a time when homosexuality was still criminalized, Anger produced, directed and appeared in a series of short, overtly homoerotic films with occult themes, most famously Scorpio Rising (1963). His first film, Fireworks (1948) saw him arrested on charges of obscenity, tried in the State of California in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, before being acquitted when it was deemed that his work was artistic rather than pornographic. We who are here to freely share and collaborate upon and enjoy erotic works owe pioneers like Anger a tremendous debt.
