A playfully self-aware film-within-a-film, My First Film veers between moments of blissful joy through to self-doubt and untold truths, but is always driven by director/creator Zia Anger’s refined and astute sense of what she is trying to deliver, and given energy by a cast and crew that buy into her vision.
According to the official film notes she likes to define the film as ‘autofiction’, feeling that the word ‘hybrid’ is a dated way of referring to a project where the classical lines between documentary and fiction blur. But there is no getting away from the fact that this is no straightforward documentary, with the narrative aspect having been developed from her 2019 multimedia performance of the same name.
The project refers to a way of presenting Anger’s artistic development, a way of detailing what happened to her first major project Always All Ways, Anne Marie – her ‘lost film’ in essence – which she worked on from 2010 to 2012. In a departure from the multimedia performance piece’s screen-shared visuals and typed-out inner monologue, Anger’s film of My First Film is a dramatisation of that disastrous shoot and its various hidden aspects.
There are clearly mixed emotions surrounding the project, which both revels in exuberance and creativity as well as pain and trauma, but at heart My First Film is a cleverly woven-together film that has benefited from distance and insight.
It offers playfulness right the from the start, as she types the names of the production companies, followed by computer typed notes saying: “This probably shouldn’t be a film…but it is. My videos are not the film lol. (as she intercuts mobile-phone shot mini-videos) Still I thought the first thing you should see should be ‘joy’. Beacause (sic) I am really happy you are watching. Happier than you could ever know!” Then she cuts the text and writes: ”I’m not sure how to start this.”
There is a brief voiceover debate about whether an earlier pitched project was too esoteric, before settling down into the core of the film, which is a creative re-enactment of that first film project. Vita (an impressive Odessa Young, playing a version of Anger) recalls making her first feature in her hometown of Ithaca, NY – a semi-autobiographical film about a young woman who gets pregnant and decides to leave home – starring her friend Dina (Devon Ross) and shot by a team of ambitious but inexperienced friends.
The shoot is always chaotic and full of personality clashes and perhaps too much weed, with Vita’s ego-tripping methods causing a near-death accident. But as this “first film” falls apart, Anger probes the nature of artistic truth and personal mythmaking and cleverly blurs lines between fiction, non-fiction and self-analysis, often inserting family video material, silent film footage, performance art and glimpses from that original shoot.
Entrancingly shot by cinematographer Ashley Connor (who shot Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline and most recently Nida Manzoor’s wire-fu/comedy Polite Society), Zia Anger does a remarkable job at wrestling the various styles, elements and tones together, and delivers an affecting and insightful film. Always All Ways, Anne Marie may have provided the backdrop for this project, but My First Film is definitely her first proper film.
US, 2024, 100mins
Dir: Zia Anger
Production: Memory, Mubi
Producer: Taylor Shung, Riel Roch-Decter
Scr: Zia Anger, Billy Feldman
Cinematography: Ashley Connor
Editors: Joe Bini, Matthew Hannam
Music: Perfume Genius
With: Odessa Young, Devon Ross, Cole Doleman, Sage Ftacek, Jane Wickline, Seth Steinburg, Abram Kurtz, Jack Anthony, Eleonore Hendricks, Eamon Farren
