Evokation of My Demon Sister

Ellen Cantor

2002, 4:38 min, color, sound

Cantor reimagines Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) as if it were a paean to Hindu goddess of destruction Kali instead of Lucifer. In Cantor's take, Anger's hypermasculine imagination of the occult is replaced by that of an ironic depiction of female "hysterics."

If I Just Turn and Run

Ellen Cantor

1998, 22:39 min, color, sound

Discovered after Cantor’s death in 2013, If I Just Turn and Run is an anomaly in Cantor’s body of work. Departing from her metatextual and appropriation-based practice, the video retains her bold diaristic approach, using herself as subject.

Remember Me

Ellen Cantor

1998, 10:25 min, b&w and color, sound

Through video collage, Cantor sets her unapologetically fatalist observations on love and intimacy to a wide-ranging set of audio-visual quotations, including clips from Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, the well-known beach scene from From Here to Eternity, the works of John Cassavetes, and more.

Within Heaven and Hell

Ellen Cantor

1996, 15:52 min, color, sound

Swinging between pleasure and torment, Cantor narrates an autobiographical story of a doomed love affair over scenes from The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974).