Ellen Cantor
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available works / œuvres disponibles
• Pinochet Porn, 2009
• the trailer, 2010
• the techno party, 2011
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Ellen Cantor © Images extraites du film, Pinochet Porn (ongoing series) : « the dictator and the maid », 1/5 ed. , 2009, 12’
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Ellen Cantor © Images extraites du film, the trailer, 1/5 ed. , 2010, 20’
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Ellen Cantor © Images extraites du film, the techno party (uncut raw footage), 1/5 ed. ,2011, 10’
Her works have been exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions and screenings including Serpentine Cinema, London; LUX, London; Participant Inc, NY; White Cubicle, London; Kunsthalle Wien and Transmission Gallery, Glasgow. Group shows include MOMA PS1, NY; Renaissance Society, Chicago; International Film Festival Rotterdam and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Cantor’s work has appeared in various publications including Artforum, Art In America and Frieze. A catalogue, My Perversion is the Belief in True Love, was published by Scalo and Kunsthalle Wien.
« Last Summer I made an exhibition at Participant Inc in New York, the main work being this drawing script. The director, Lia Gangitano, and I had the idea we would begin creating a film during the show with the help of some of the filmmakers in the gallery, projecting the footage under the drawings as we progressed…. This is what is most satisfying about the making of Pinochet Porn – the magical intuitive co-operation, especially as being an artist can often be extremely solitary…. Essentially this film is a collaboration of friends; it is possible to shoot only with the contribution of each person involved. »
« Pinochet Porn » is a soap opera-like narrative about five children growing up during the Pinochet regime, and their subsequent maturation into adulthood. Shot on Super-8, this feature-length film is based on a 2005 hand drawn film script « Circus Lives from Hell ». The story while disclosing the intertwined lives of these five characters, also reveals its nature as a microcosm of surrounding political discord, cycles of destruction, and mounting violence. It is at once tragic and comedic. Segments of a particular history are made observable through the circumstances of the lives depicted, all obliquely revolving around the Pinochet regime in Chile. Within this story, childhood fantasy is permeated by structures of annihilation, which the characters later create in their own lives as adults. The story ends with the question: Is tragedy a choice? The title refers to the complex intimate relationships of the characters; but more so, to the regime’s systematic, sadistic destruction of individual lives – policies furtively upheld by the United States, United Kingdom, and the Papacy. This film stretches across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, extending across continents, countries, cities…. It reaches from the shtetl, the barrio, the concentration camp, into a digital age of increasing mobility and globalization. Yet, despite genuine progress, it describes a world plagued by colonialism, imperialism, fascism, and terrorism.
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Pinochet Porn (a feature film in progress)
Directed by : Ellen Cantor
Director of Photography : John Brattin
Art Director : Jay Kinney
Executive Producer : John Maybury
Narrated by : Pablo Leon de la Barra
Starring : LIA GANGITANO
Michel Auder, Patrick Blumer, Ellen Cantor, Jim Fletcher, Andrew Haynes, Tristan Hughes-Freeland, Jay Kinney, Rosalie Knox, Harri Kupiainen, Danny McDonald, Brandon Olson, Annabel Sexton, Spencer Sweeney, John Thomson, Sofia Elisabeth Von Herrlich, Stephen Ward, Cerith Wyn Evans
With special guest star appearances:
Kerry Davis, Francesca Gangitano, Cate Giordano, Malcom Hamilton, Ryan Harman, Mateo Kamzelas, Nuutti Kataja, Debbi Martini, Carmel McMahon, Jo Murray, Emma Nilsson, Arturo Carlo Samperi Malagnino, Shandi Sullivan
Ellen Cantor currently lives and works in London and New York. She has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions and screening including Participant Inc, NY; Serpentine Cinema, London; Lux, London; Kunsthalle Wien; Transmission, Glasgow; Delfina, London; Feigen, Chicago; Cabinet, London and Postmasters, New York as well as at Edinburgh International Film Festival and Rotterdam’s International Film Festival amongst many others. Cantor is a Cubitt artist.
