Kenneth Anger’s INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME w/ Brian Butler—on 16mm! at Philosophical Research Society – Los Angeles, CA

Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome: Film as Magical Ritual — A Presentation by Brian Butler

Co-presented by the Philosophical Research Society’s 7th House Screenings, the Kenneth Anger Estate, and Los Angeles Filmforum.

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is more than a film. It is a cinematic ritual that merges Aleister Crowley’s Aeon with Hollywood’s occult underground. Conceived by Kenneth Anger in the early 1950s and reworked over decades, it summoned the haunted glamour of Marjorie Cameron, Curtis Harrington, Renata Druks, and other lost avatars of the Babalon current.

Following the overwhelming response to KENNETH ANGER’S LUCIFER RISING: THE OCCULT SAGA OF A CURSED FILM at PRS in April, Brian Butler — artist, occultist, and official representative of the Kenneth Anger Estate — returns to reveal the hidden mythic currents behind Pleasure Dome. Drawing on two decades of research and first-hand connection, Butler brings rare insights into the tangled legacy of this work: from writing one of the earliest major essays on Cameron (Disinformation’s Book of Lies), to a decade-long friendship with Curtis Harrington, to visiting the house where the film was shot and working closely with Kenneth Anger to restore his lost 1958 three-screen version, which he premiered to a sold-out crowd at the Max Linder Panorama in Paris in 2015.

Part screening, part ritual transmission, this presentation features a rare 16mm reversal print from the Kenneth Anger Estate archive and invites you to step inside a magickal operation disguised as cinema — an initiatory vision that still flickers through underground culture today.

Dir. Kenneth Anger, 1954, 38 mins, Unrated (Adult Audiences), 16mm film.

Special thanks to Los Angeles Filmforum for 16mm projection.

Ticket Price: $24 (In-Person Only Event)

Please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions

Photo credit: Stills © Kenneth Anger Estate. No reproduction without permission.

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