Eaux d'Artifice
Eaux d'artifice (1953) is a short experimental film by Kenneth Anger. The film was shot in the Villa d'Este in Tivoli, Italy. The film consists entirely of a woman dressed in eighteenth-century clothes who wanders amidst the garden fountains of the Villa d'Este[1] ("a Hide and Seek in a night-time labyrinth"[2]) to the sounds of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons", until she steps into a fountain and momentarily disappears. The actress, Carmilla Salvatorelli (not "Carmello"), was "a little midget" Anger had met through Federico Fellini.[3] Anger used a short actress to suggest a different sense of scale, whereby the monuments seemed bigger (a technique he said was inspired by etchings of the gardens in the Villa d'Este by Giovanni Battista Piranesi).[3]
| Eaux d'artifice | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Kenneth Anger |
| Produced by | Kenneth Anger |
| Starring | Carmilla Salvatorelli |
| Cinematography | Kenneth Anger |
| Edited by | Kenneth Anger |
Release date |
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Running time | 12 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The title, a play on words, is meant to suggest Feux d'artifice (Fireworks), in obvious reference to Anger's earlier 1947 work. Film critic Scott MacDonald has suggested that Fireworks was a film about the repression of (the film-maker's) homosexuality in the United States, whereas Eaux d'Artifice "suggests an explosion of pleasure and freedom."[3]
In 1993, this short film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
References
- "Interview with Kenneth Anger". Electric Sheep. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
- Haller, Robert A. (1990). "Kenneth Anger". The Equinox. 3 (10): 239–60. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
- MacDonald, Scott (2006). A critical cinema: interviews with independent filmmakers. UCLA UP. pp. 27–30. ISBN 978-0-520-24595-2.
External links
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