An interactive live cinema performance from filmmaker Zia Anger, who reflects on her lost and abandoned projects. For the duration of My First Film, the desktop of Zia’s computer is projected onto the cinema screen. Sitting within the audience, the filmmaker types into a text window in real time, narrating thoughts and storylines which are fleshed out by accompanying video files, YouTube clips and Instagram stories. In this highly personal and often self-critical work, Zia describes her process of making and pitching work and details the often brutal rejections she receives as an independent filmmaker. After premiering at the 53rd New York Film Festival, each rendition of the performance contains new revelations and nuanced narrative shifts that build on both the original work and its accumulating commentary. The audience is encouraged to reconsider the formal limits of where a film begins and ends, and to see that a film is only as fixed as the world around it.
