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.

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
Animation by: Cy Gavin

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

With special guest star appearances:

Anna Betbeze, 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, Kianja Strobert, Shandi Sullivan

Ellen Cantor currently lives and works in London and New York. She has exhibited internationally with solo exhibitions and screenings including Participant Inc, NY; Serpentine Cinema, London; Lux, London; White Cubicle, London; Kunsthalle Wien; and Transmission, Glasgow; Group shows include MOMA PS1, NY; Renaissance Society, Chicago; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; as well as at Edinburgh International Film Festival and Rotterdam’s International Film Festival amongst many others. Cantor’s work has appeared in various publications including Artforum, Art In America and Frieze. Cantor is a Cubitt artist.

Curated by Jasmin Tsou