My First Film takes audiences behind the scenes of the creative process through a long gestation
MY FIRST FILM (Zia Anger, 2024)
Roxy Cinema
2 Sixth Ave. at Church St.
Friday, August 30, 7:15
www.roxycinemanewyork.com
memory.is
“Did you know that most filmmakers spend their entire lives making some version of the same movie?” Vita (Odessa Young) says in Zia Anger’s My First Film, portraying the director’s onscreen doppelganger.
In 2010, Anger shot her first film, Always All Ways, Anne Marie, which was soon relegated to “abandoned” status on IMDB. In 2015, she made the nine-minute short My Last Film, starring Lola Kirke, Kelly Rohrbach, Rosanna Arquette, and Mac DeMarco, which screened at the New York Film Festival. In 2018, she toured her first movie as part of a live performance that slowly morphed into the feature-length My First Film, which has played numerous festivals and is being shown August 30 at the Roxy before streaming on MUBI. My First Film goes behind the scenes of Anger’s creative process as she revisits her earlier work; Reunion founder Sean Glass calls it “the making of the making of the making of . . .”
Comparing writing and directing to getting pregnant and giving birth, Anger and cowriter Billy Feldman employ split screens, voice-over narration, typewritten text, and other cinematic elements in blurring the line between fiction and reality, with exciting handheld phototography by Ashley Connor and a cast that includes Young, Devon Ross as the protagonist, Philip Ettinger as Vita’s boyfriend, Cole Doman, Sage Ftacek, Seth Steinberg, and Anger’s father, Ruby Max Fury.
The words “I’m not sure how to start this” are typed at the beginning of the film. “I am really happy you are watching, happier than you could ever know.” The 7:15 screening at the Roxy will be followed by a Q&A with Anger, Connor, Young, Ettinger, Doman, and Steinberg, moderated by actor and writer Annie Hamilton.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]