Eaux d'Artifice

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Eaux d'artifice
Directed byKenneth Anger
Produced byKenneth Anger
StarringCarmilla Salvatorelli
CinematographyKenneth Anger
Edited byKenneth Anger
Release date
  • 1953 (1953)
Running time
12 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Eaux d'artifice (1953) is a short experimental film by Kenneth Anger.

Summary

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.

Production

The film was shot in the

Tivoli, Italy. 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]

Inspiration

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]

Legacy

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".[4][5]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Interview with Kenneth Anger". Electric Sheep. Retrieved 23 August 2010.
  2. ISBN 9780877287193
    . Retrieved 23 August 2010.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-0-520-24595-2
    .
  4. ^ "Librarian Announces National Film Registry Selections (March 7, 1994) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2020-09-30.
  5. ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2020-09-30.

External links

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