Six years ago Zia Anger’s live cinema presentation My First Film (from which the film My First Film is adapted) sparked a fire around her name. It was as much a one-woman show as it was a film, Anger using the tools of 21st-century technology to give her agency in communicating her story to an audience in the way she saw fit: in real time. She would sit off to the side of an audience, projecting her own multimedia presentation to the screen and narrating through the use of a notes app. That film, then, is primarily a documentary, built on old footage from and narration regarding Anger’s first film — Always All Ways, Anne Marie. My First Film takes the same rough structure and narrative arc as the performance, and works it into a “traditional” feature film (though the final product is still a remarkable departure from what the typical filmgoer is accustomed to). Anger begins the movie with the words, “Note: This probably shouldn’t be a film.”
Anger opens this latest effort in a similar way as her performances, showcasing videos of herself captured from Instagram stories, before introducing her avatar, Vita (Odessa Young), to narrate the same introduction to her filmmaking. Vita is a young filmmaker shooting her first film: a semi-autobiographical story of a young girl who decides to leave her dying father after she discovers she is pregnant, in order to find her mother. As Vita will remind the audience several times throughout the film, this is a true story. Except she has two moms, neither of whom abandoned her. And as the film goes on, the story seems to stray further from the truth — a self-indulgent portrait of the filmmaker which plays out her greatest fears and embellishes her lost virtues. She casts a friend, Dina (Devon Ross), as herself. They’ve shared the same lovers (in the performance “older men”), boyfriends, and friends for some time, though Vita thinks of Dina as a more perfect version of herself.
It would be easy for Anger to sidestep reflection and veer into self-absorption, even in assigning herself (Vita) all the blame for every mishap on set, to say that the world of the film revolved around her. Instead, the audience is allowed to see Vita as exactly what she is: an amateur surrounded by amateurs. Her lead actress isn’t capable of delivering a convincing performance of Vita’s own lowest points; Vita’s boyfriend is derailing the set in order to indulge in his own insecurities about their relationship; the actors are getting too drunk on set, but it’s all the result of the conditions from which a first film is grown — desperation. The film, both immediately and in a more meta sense, is centered on Vita allowing herself the grace to see Dina as a separate person, and by extension the film as a fiction — releasing herself from the narrative she’s imposed on her own life. But, of course, this film is still a narrative about Anger’s life. My First Film ‘18 felt like a breath of fresh air, specifically because Anger seemed to have processed her film through the performance, and the latter was an act of letting go of the former. That remark isn’t meant to suggest that My First Film is bad, and viewers unfamiliar with Anger’s previous work will likely find something wholly unique — an experience as frustrating as it is cathartic, and as selfish as it is selfless.
The film’s structure is open to Anger’s whims and in a constant state of flux between the events of the meta world (Anger’s film), the film world (Vita’s narration), and the filmed world (a recreation of Always All Ways, Anne Marie). It’s hard, near impossible, to write about My First Film without addressing what made My First Film ‘18 truly great, Anger’s performance. As a live documentary experience, Anger’s film took a leap in form indicative of the innovation possible in 21st-century guerilla filmmaking. The contents of her story added rich dramatic and thematic layers to the performance, which infused a simple text tool with a depth and breadth of emotion rarely found in indie features. Every typo and misclick carried the weight of an entire person behind the screen, managing in real time the entire narrative and technical burden of the piece. The film’s candidness in its form and function, as well as the total transparency of its creator’s status and intention was endearing. Though My First Film does adapt the performance into a coherent fiction, it loses something personal in distancing itself from Anger directly. Perhaps this distance is what allowed Anger to create a harsher critique of the film and herself, which brings about the project’s most dramatic sequences. For instance, a near-death incident precipitated by her behavior is expanded upon, and Vita comes across far worse than Anger ever did in her original.
My First Film finally makes a drastic departure from the performance when her crew crumbles and Vita is left alone with Dina. There are many less-than-subtle philosophical musings from the pair about the nature of art and community, which develop into a meta-textual exploration of the film and family which Anger has made. Vita often repeats the line, “Most filmmakers spend their entire lives making some version of the same movie.” In truth, this latest effort marks the third time Anger has made some version of her first film, and hopefully it will be the last — she seems ready to move on. The ending, which plays out Vita’s (and by extension, Anger’s) second abortion suggests that film is finally over. Her doctor assures her: “All you need is a body to create. But what you create, that is up to you.” One last breath before the final termination of My First Film.
DIRECTOR: Zia Anger; CAST: Odessa Young, Devon Ross, Cole Doman, Philip Ettinger; DISTRIBUTOR: MUBI; IN THEATERS: August 30; STREAMING: September 6; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
