E. Jane

A Whore in the House of the Lord is a 16mm color film that navigates the bind women encounter in Christian fundamentalist churches as being both the representative body of the church and the conduit in which Satan's temptation can creep in and corrupt the saints. Inspired by the silent films of the 1920s, the film fuses gothic architecture and design with the rituals of rabid Christian fanaticism popularized in the American South.

An autodocumentary/video essay about my attempt to peacefully skinny dip in a lake in Maine as a private performance, reflecting on surveillance culture, performance, and the Black femme body.

The video celebrates women who expand beyond the possibility of belonging to anyone or anything, while its title makes a plea to belong: let me be a woman. It beautifully captures the aporia of longing to be held and refusal to be grasped, one that inevitably led me back to the searing question guiding Sojourner Truth’s 1851 Black feminist manifesto: “Ain’t I a woman?”

short movie by E. Jane