Mine Are True Love Stories:
The Making of Pinochet Porn
Type
Conversation
Series
Ellen Cantor: Mine Are True Love Stories
Location
Skowhegan NYC
136 West 22nd Street
New York, NY, 10011
Date
7:30 PM
Conversation with John Brattin, Lia Gangitano, Cy Gavin, Jay Kinney and Josh Thorson, moderated by Clara López Menéndez.
This panel discusses Ellen Cantor’s final film Pinochet Porn following a screening at the Museum of Modern Art on October 31, 2016. Artists and writers discuss major themes—sexually explicit material, representations of war and violence, humor and sexuality—the personal narratives underpinning the film, and the artist’s editorial process.
Pinochet Porn is understood as Ellen’s most ambitious work, shot and edited during the last five years of her life, then completed posthumously by her collaborators who followed the extensive notes and storyboards she left for its completion. The feature-length film brilliantly extends her moving-image practice, crisscrossing between fact and fiction, cinematic spectacle, and true confession of a dizzying array of stories. Ellen obliquely depicts political discord through the intertwined lives of five children as they mature amidst General Augusto Pinochet’s regime in Chile throughout the 1970s-80s. An editorial feat consisting of Super 8mm film, archival footage, and animated drawings, Pinochet Porn uses the episodic structure of a soap opera to feature humor and drama marked by subversive sexuality. The film also documents an extended moment in New York and London with a range of avant-garde artists, cultural figures, and their children as cast and crew.
About the series:
Titled after a statement by Ellen Cantor in 1995, Mine Are True Love Stories takes the work of an artist as a prompt to discuss different ideas in the field of contemporary art. Ellen Cantor was one of the most influential artists of her generation charting new feminist representations of sexuality and female empowerment. Organized by curator and writer Natasha Marie Llorens, the series brings together artists and scholars amidst an unprecedented joint effort of the Estate of Ellen Cantor and seven organizing venues presenting and discussing her work.
