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]), until she steps into a fountain and momentarily disappears. The actress, Carmilla Salvatorelli (not "Carmello"), was "a little midget" Anger had met through Frederico 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]
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 filmmaker's) gay sexuality 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".
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