Kenneth Anger (born
Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer; born February 3, 1927) is an American
underground experimental filmmaker, actor and author. Working exclusively in short films, he has produced almost forty works since 1937, nine of which have been grouped together as the "Magick Lantern Cycle". His films variously merge
surrealism with
homoeroticism and the
occult, and have been described as containing "elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama, and spectacle". Anger himself has been described as "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers, and certainly the first whose work addressed homosexuality in an undisguised, self-implicating manner", and his "role in rendering gay culture visible within American cinema, commercial or otherwise, is impossible to overestimate", with several being released prior to the
legalization of homosexuality in the United States. He has also focused upon occult themes in many of his films, being fascinated by the English occultist
Aleister Crowley, and is an adherent of
Thelema, the religion Crowley founded.