Like its young author, the film was precocious. Shot when the filmmaker was only seventeen years old, 1 the film is the sadomasochistic fantasy of a young man, played by the teenage Anger, who dreams he is sexually assaulted by a gang of sailors. THE INAUGURAL FILM of postwar queer cinema and a watershed event in the history of the American avant-garde, Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks of 1947 is an autobiographical account of the awakening of desire. Kenneth Anger, Fireworks, 1947, 16 mm, black-and-white, sound, 15 minutes.
