My Surfing Lucifer is a brief, rather uneventful but nonetheless enjoyable film of “Surfing’s divine prince of decadence,” Bunker Spreckels (who inherited fifty million dollars at age 21), surfing to the Beach Boys Good Vibrations. Though My Surfing Lucifer mostly consists of medium/long shots, Anger produces some interesting close ups as Bunky surfs in a slippery, jet black wetsuit in emerald green water against a heavily saturated blue sky.
Kenneth Anger is an independent filmmaker and author. He claims to have appeared as the child prince in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935), but Warner Brothers production reports and casting sheets conclusively document that a little girl, child actress Sheila Brown, actually played the role. Anger did, however, begin making films at an early age. Most of his films are short experimental works, ranging from 3.5-30 minutes. His career has been recognized with life achievement awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Silverlake Film Festival, the Mar del Plata Film Festival, and the Maya Deren Award for Experimental Film/Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Among other notable honors, he received the Poetic Film Prize at Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz, France in 1949, which was presented by Jean Cocteau. Anger’s work has screened around the world, including at the Institut Francais de Vienne in Austria, the Galerie… read more