There’s Never Been a Movie Like Zia Anger’s ‘My First Film’ – MASHAHER

With the fall festival season in full swing, countless movies stand at the beginning of an uncertain lifecycle, seeking a distributor to reach a wider audience. But a greater number of films don’t even get to that step. Produced in 2010, Zia Anger’s first film, “Always All Ways, Anne Marie,” became one of the thousands of features that find themselves without a path forward after being roundly rejected from every festival it was submitted to.

It’s a dead end that a lot of filmmakers face, but it’s a hard one not to take personally. Now more than a decade older, Anger has transformed that anticlimax into her first (distributed) film “My First Film,” a fictionalized retelling of the chaotic production of “Always All Ways” and an intricate, “Hearts of Darkness”-level reflection on forging for artistic redemption in catastrophic circumstances. The strange logic of finding a way back to feature filmmaking through reconsidering her previous failures is not lost on Anger — but it’s the path that presented itself.

“When I knew that I had this story, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what it feels like to have something that could actually be made.’ I just decided to follow that,” Anger says over Zoom.

That self-inflicted homecoming has been unfolding for years now though. After spending the 2010s directing music videos for artists like Mitski and Beach House, Anger crafted a live performance piece, also titled “My First Film,” re-examining the same turbulent period of her life that’s fictionalized here. In it, Anger would perform on her laptop, displaying various windows and AirDropping select files to the audience. This live rearrangement of footage from the unreleased film, personal photos and typed narration attracted producers at the independent banner Memory, which came aboard to bring “My First Film” on tour.

When the COVID pandemic began, Anger adapted the piece into a screen-sharing performance that streamed to remote viewers watching amid lockdowns. But even after retelling this story to plenty of live audiences, the prospect of turning it into a narrative feature still proved intimidating for Anger.

“It was going to be putting myself out there in ways that I was happy to do in a performance,” Anger says. “But for it to be out there forever and edited, something I couldn’t touch again that lives in theaters and on a streamer – that was going to be a lot.”

Indeed, “My First Film” can be a lot. The feature, now streaming on Mubi after a roadshow rollout through select cities, stars Odessa Young as Vita: a fictionalized version of Zia that sees her unqualified artistic enthusiasm for her scrappy movie collapse amid a pile-up of shitty boyfriend drama, Adderall spirals and a careless disregard for her crew’s well-being. Such candid autofiction makes it not entirely surprising that “My First Film” premiered at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, despite being a narrative feature.

“I did not think I was making a documentary. But people like titles,” Anger says. “All these labels are there for the online video store category — like the Netflix rows. I always like how creative those get. You’re like, ‘What even is that category? But I never thought once about what category this was going to fall in when I was making it.”

Shot in a dizzying whirl by DP Ashley Conner (also fictionalized as a character in the story), “My First Film” flexes a discomforting psychological grip — made all the more intimate by splintering the drama in the edit with Anger’s own home videos and behind-the-scenes footage.

“Everything in this movie that was not part of the live-action narrative was there for a storytelling reason. It wasn’t intended as stylistic,” Anger says. “I understood it would be complicated and treacherous. But some of my favorite art is incredibly personal. I thought about the other filmmakers and authors and musicians that I really like. You kind of only live once. So, yeah. YOLO… That’s ridiculous. It’s like it’s 2015.”

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In my memory of your remote performance of “My First Film,” the piece finished with you appearing via webcam as a curtain call. With this film, your first appearance is in the opening minutes. Why did you feel the need to introduce yourself right away in this edition?

I was just going to do a live-action narrative with a reveal of me at the end. Then we got into the edit. If I was going to be revealed as a character, you had to have some idea of who was telling this story from the beginning. That’s also because Odessa and I don’t look exactly alike. My dad famously said, “Why did you cast somebody so beautiful to play you?” Which I agree. But it’s the movies. You can do that, right?

It must be intimidating for an unrestrained self-portrait like this to be your first distributed feature. It’ll be the first impression that you leave on viewers new to your work.

The film can create the impression of a very intimidating person. Like, “Wow! She really put herself out there. That’s who she is.” That was not my intention. But the people that I will get to work with are going to see the me that has put myself all the way out there as a positive. And the people that see me as somebody that has put themselves out there too much are probably not the people that I want to work with. It’s kind of self-selection.

You’ve spoken before about how you would often read online reactions to the “My First Film” performance — both the praise and the criticisms.

I love feedback. When we were making the film, I did notes with anybody that would do notes with me. I am not making this film for nobody to see. But that doesn’t mean that I have to take the feedback. When I have problems with somebody saying, “I didn’t like that” or whatever, what I try to think about is I don’t like that many things either. Totally! I don’t like everything! But I hope I also can find respect for the labor and creativity that people put into something.

Could you contextualize when you began directing music videos in relation to the original production of “Always All Ways, Anne Marie”?

About the time that I started applying to film festivals. I met a musician and I wanted to sleep with him. [Laughs] He didn’t want to sleep with me. It was a very petty beginning, but it immediately put me in touch with my people. I made videos for Angel Olsen and Jenny Hval, who are two of my favorite artists. I ended up continuing relationships with great people, like Ashley Connor, my cinematographer. I met Taylor Shung, who then became a producer on “My First Film.” I never got to make a music video for Perfume Genius, but I worked with them and they ultimately did the score for this film.

You’ve been frank in your frustrations with music videos becoming a grind, but did you still find the format creatively fulfilling?

I never made any money on them. I always had a day job when I was doing them. Music videos are some of the — I would say — worst places to make films. They’re always low-budget. It’s always last-minute. It’s always really, really difficult conditions. But it got me to really fall in love with the process, which is what I love now. Mitski is one of the greatest people I’ve ever worked with. You’re just like, “Wow, you are really devoted to this thing that you do.” And then I realized how much more I needed to devote myself to the things that I wanted to do.

“My First Film” premiered at a documentary festival in Copenhagen. How did that become the launching pad for the film? Were other festivals in play?

The timing just became very awkward. I had been rejected from four very big festivals with the film at various stages of being finished. And then I was going to have a baby. I needed it to go out into the world. And, like me having a baby at the same time as this film coming out, not getting to go to a really big festival — yeah, that’s something that would happen to me. I can’t say it doesn’t suck, but I also wouldn’t have this film that I have if I had gone to one. I don’t want it any other way.

The road show screenings ahead of the Mubi release seems fitting, especially in the context of how the film discusses festivals as gate-keeping institutions.

There’s a film that’s out right now that’s got billboards and commercials. And my dad texted me: “I went to this movie last night. I was the only person in the theater.” I was like, “Well, was it good?” And he was like, “Not really.” I’m only saying that because I think that the old way of doing stuff is not totally working. There are different ways to get things out into the world.

What’s more meaningful: hundreds of screenings with one person in each of them or a sold-out auditorium with a Q&A?

Yes, and what I learned through the live performance is that scarcity is everything.

I remember being initially frustrated trying to secure a ticket to the remote performance during COVID. I thought, “It’s digital! There shouldn’t be finite admissions.” But, of course, that ends up making the whole thing intimate and sacred.

It allows for a much more exciting experience — to be surrounded by people or to know that others are watching the same thing all at once. It’s community.

Is this the final form of “My First Film”?

I’m a little bit concerned that I’m going to be put in the box of, “There’s the hybrid filmmaker that makes personal work.” I don’t have anything hybrid or personal left inside of me right now. I need more life experience. I’m really hopeful that I’m going to dive into some other stories that I connect with personally, but that are not my personal story. But then, yeah — let’s touch base in 10 years. Because I’m sure, you know… this is the story of my life, and I am always going to come back to it.

This interview has been edited and condensed.