Gay filmmaker and author Kenneth Anger, known for his experimental and homoerotic movies and his wildly gossipy Hollywood Babylon books, has died at age 96.

Anger died May 11, but his death was just widely reported this week. He died at an assisted-living facility in Yucca Valley, Calif., Spencer Glesby, a spokesman for Sprüth Magers, an art gallery that represented Anger, told national media outlets.

Anger, sometimes called the godfather of queer film, grew up in the Los Angeles area and began making movies in his youth. He was 20 when he made Fireworks, shot in his parents’ Beverly Hills home when they were out of town. Anger appears in the 14-minute film having “a sadomasochistic encounter with a group of musclebound sailors, one of whom undoes his pants to reveal a Roman candle,” as The New York Times describes the movie in its Anger obituary.