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Kenneth Anger (born 1930, Los Angeles) is a visionary artist, legendary pioneer of independent filmmaking, a "cinematographic magician" whose work paved the way for the camp/queer movement, the pop video and the celebrity culture. His influence reaches beyond the avant-garde and into the mainstream, touching the work of directors like Jean Cocteau, Stan Brakhage, Derek Jarman, David Lynch or Martin Scorsese.
In Eaux d’Artifice (1953) we see a baroque maze of staircases, fountains, gargoyles, and balustrades. A figure in eighteenth century costume hurries through this environment while the camera zooms into and away from the mask-like faces water spirits carved in stone or studies in slow motion the fall of fountains and sprays. Just before the end of the film, the heroine flashes a fan, then turns into a fountain.
Eaux d’Artifice is Anger’s most abstract film: In this single-image film, the author is interested not in the narrative, but primarily in the rhythmic, and its elements are the pace of the heroine, the speed of the zooms, the slowness of the retarded waterfalls, and above all, the montage in relation to the music. Here, the unique staging of light, the focus on the rhythmic and the suspended spectacle create a link to the work and the exhibition of Cerith Wyn Evans.