Fireworks

First of all, I want to comment on the Maya Deren films by saying that Maya Deren is the most stunning woman to ever exist and thank Jesussssss that she used herself as a subject in her films.

The Kenneth Anger film "Fireworks" was the most interesting film of the night, to me. It was interesting in that it is obviously very personal to the sexuality of the filmmaker and would have been very very controversial for the mainstream movie audience of its time, and even the mainstream movie audience of today. It was a film heavy in images that created a disturbing tension between sexuality and violence. This tension represents the homophobic aggressions that Anger meant to speak out about, and did so very clearly with a wonderful aesthetic. The scenes of sexuality were most apparent in the extended footage of the "homosexual subject" dressing, the attention to the man flexing, and the images of the men in bed. The climactic scene of violence, the stampede of the Navy men and the torture inflicted by them, was so sublime and profound. I will never shake the image of the fingers digging into the "victim's" nostrils and the blood spewing out or the image of the hands searching through the guts for the gauge/meter. These violent images are far far far more unnerving, for me, than the cut eyeball could ever be. The most beautiful scene of all was the milk pouring over the victim's blood-stained body. Looking past the inherent sexuality in this scene, there was such a graceful and relieving dynamic to the metaphor that it created.