MOVIES ARE NOT IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE: A CASE STUDY
“You just need to feel like God sometimes.” - Zia Anger
One has to be a lunatic to make an independent film. This filmmaker must be tenacious in the face of unrelenting challenges: arguments among the cast and crew, budget shortfalls, having too many actors, having only bears as actors, love affairs and mysterious older men. Sometimes the representation of one’s own life is the problem and they must cobble the past together with whatever pieces of footage remain. Even worse, there is the director’s own ego, fighting against them through it all. Filmmaking is no challenge for the faint of heart or spirit. Yet somehow, sometimes, a movie or two slips out into the world.
These are the brave filmmakers who hid nothing, split themselves open and let the audience see what it takes; a messy blend of truth and fiction. Each in a unique way, the following films explore the themes of movie making from a personal perspective that we do not often have the opportunity to witness. They provide proof that making a movie is possible by capturing the whole thing on camera.
This series is sponsored by MUBI in promotion of their newest release MY FIRST FILM by Zia Anger. Get 30 days free to watch hundreds of thoughtfully hand-picked films on MUBI!
Films in this Program
Zia Anger
100 MINUTES
Between 2010 and 2012, Zia Anger directed a feature film titled ALWAYS ALL WAYS, ANNE MARIE in her hometown of Ithaca, New York. She cast her friend Deana LeBlanc as a surrogate for herself, and her actual father as the father. The semi-fantastical, semi-autobiographical film had a beleaguered production—rife with Adderall, an unwanted pregnancy, near-fatal accidents, and imploding friendships. It was never screened or distributed, but Anger has long bore its scars…
Anger’s new feature, titled MY FIRST FILM—adapted from her 2018 video-art performance of the same name—is a final exorcism of ALWAYS ALL WAYS, ANNE MARIE. The bulk of the sinewy, essayistic, and highly personal material is comprised of recreations of that film’s making, with the actress Odessa Young cast as Vita, a young and excitable filmmaker in over her head as she corrals friends, family, and neighbors into the hills and gorges of Ithaca to make her first movie. The film breathlessly covers an ambitious amount of thematic ground, putting the creative process in conversation with stories of birth, abortion, and Anger’s family history, specifically her two mothers and father’s ties to the gay communes of Ithaca and the “town myth” of her own conception.
“One of the most surprising, layered films of the year. It’s the meta movie to end all meta movies.” - collider
“Anger has an incisive sense of humor about her failures, especially about her first film, which she concedes may not actually be her first film because nobody saw it. If a movie is never viewed, is it even a movie?” - Paste
“MY FIRST FILM — a wildly imaginative, almost disorientingly complex and unapologetically sincere film — is a testament to the collective energy necessary for all creation... It’s the supreme accomplishment of this film that, by the end, you don’t feel pressured to interpret or rationalise [its] improbable scenario, but instead experience it as if it were the real thing.” - Journey Into Cinema
Anger’s new feature, titled MY FIRST FILM—adapted from her 2018 video-art performance of the same name—is a final exorcism of ALWAYS ALL WAYS, ANNE MARIE. The bulk of the sinewy, essayistic, and highly personal material is comprised of recreations of that film’s making, with the actress Odessa Young cast as Vita, a young and excitable filmmaker in over her head as she corrals friends, family, and neighbors into the hills and gorges of Ithaca to make her first movie. The film breathlessly covers an ambitious amount of thematic ground, putting the creative process in conversation with stories of birth, abortion, and Anger’s family history, specifically her two mothers and father’s ties to the gay communes of Ithaca and the “town myth” of her own conception.
“One of the most surprising, layered films of the year. It’s the meta movie to end all meta movies.” - collider
“Anger has an incisive sense of humor about her failures, especially about her first film, which she concedes may not actually be her first film because nobody saw it. If a movie is never viewed, is it even a movie?” - Paste
“MY FIRST FILM — a wildly imaginative, almost disorientingly complex and unapologetically sincere film — is a testament to the collective energy necessary for all creation... It’s the supreme accomplishment of this film that, by the end, you don’t feel pressured to interpret or rationalise [its] improbable scenario, but instead experience it as if it were the real thing.” - Journey Into Cinema
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
75 MINUTES
No one knows better than Mohsen Makhmalbaf that Iranians are movie mad, so when he placed a casting call for one hundred actors for a new film, he expected a crowd; what he got was a crush—five thousand people. After genially announcing, “You are both the subject and the actors in the film,” he begins auditions. What unfolds is a parade of individuals who, for love of cinema, are by turns brash, crafty, shy, touchingly open, unwittingly hilarious. From would-be Paul Newmans to women who are intellectual rebels under their chadors, SALAAM CINEMA is very much about the power dynamics in casting. Makhmalbaf plays the film director as judge, tease, and actor. A brilliant exposé of the film that is in the hearts of a people, and the people that are the heart of cinema; this is experimental filmmaking in every sense. Yet what we feel most is the director’s controlling hand—precisely the paradox Makhmalbaf is exploring.
Yoshishige Yoshida
124 MINUTES
Something like Yoshida’s response to Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA, CONFESSIONS AMONG ACTRESSES finds Yoshida teaming up with three prominent Japanese actresses—Mariko Okada, Ruriko Asaoka, and Ineko Arima, each renowned for playing eminently modern women who have been wronged by the men around them—to craft a fragmentary, perpetually shapeshifting work on the relationship between performance and trauma. Confessional scenes marked by an air of documentary are interspersed with more conventionally staged moments, and, when combined with Yoshida’s radical sense of visual composition and jagged, deliberately conspicuous editing, this film conjures a dizzying swirl of disparate realities.
Jonathan Caouette
91 MINUTES
A pioneering, ahead-of-its-time work in the development of the autobiographical documentary, Jonathan Caouette’s cathartic film diary TARNATION swirls together Super 8 and VHS home movies, answering machine messages, family photographs, and other records of a lifetime. TARNATION tells the story of Caouette’s tumultuous childhood, his coming out as gay, and his complex relationship with his schizophrenic mother, a former beauty queen whose life was derailed by the electroshock treatments she received in her youth. Famously made for just $218 and edited using free iMovie software, TARNATION went on to become a critical sensation that redefined the boundaries of personal filmmaking.
Sandi Tan
96 MINUTES
The story of SHIRKERS is one of a search for lost time.
In 1992, 19-year-old Singaporean rebel filmmaker Sandi Tan devised, wrote, and starred in an independent feature called “SHIRKERS”. Under the direction and mentorship of her enthusiastic yet elusive film instructor Georges Cardona, Tan and her friends, scraped together with a meager budget Singapore's first road movie. The title was inspired by Tan’s idea that in life, there were people who were neither movers nor shakers, but shirkers—those who evade responsibility and duty, escaping the confines of society. Inspired in part by J.D. Salinger's Catcher and the Rye, it starred Tan as S., a murderer and kidnapper who used a colorful hand-made boardgame on a mysterious mission to save children. “SHIRKERS” was a highly anticipated shock to the country’s film world that would never come to fruition. When shooting wrapped, Cardona stole the film and vanished.
In 2011 Tan recovered her 70 reels of footage upon Cardona’s death—but, tragically, without the sound recordings. With no recourse for reclaiming the reels, “SHIRKERS” lingered on for Tan as a phantom limb until she decided to resuscitate what was left. Tan’s 2018 documentary of the same title as the incomplete film, SHIRKERS, collages together the luminous footage from her original feature with personal archival material, entrancing sound design, and contemporary interviews with friends and collaborators to tell the story of the stolen film.
Each of the recovered reels represent months of labor, and were the culmination of an entire youth and childhood spent dreaming, writing, and making art in a gutsy, non-conformist ethic. There’s no simple calculation for what happens when this material disappears. The cultural impact “SHIRKERS” had on Singapore, the film movements it inspired, the influence it exerted, the community it fostered—all these things belong to another world, humming tantalizingly beyond an elusive barrier parallel to our own.
In 1992, 19-year-old Singaporean rebel filmmaker Sandi Tan devised, wrote, and starred in an independent feature called “SHIRKERS”. Under the direction and mentorship of her enthusiastic yet elusive film instructor Georges Cardona, Tan and her friends, scraped together with a meager budget Singapore's first road movie. The title was inspired by Tan’s idea that in life, there were people who were neither movers nor shakers, but shirkers—those who evade responsibility and duty, escaping the confines of society. Inspired in part by J.D. Salinger's Catcher and the Rye, it starred Tan as S., a murderer and kidnapper who used a colorful hand-made boardgame on a mysterious mission to save children. “SHIRKERS” was a highly anticipated shock to the country’s film world that would never come to fruition. When shooting wrapped, Cardona stole the film and vanished.
In 2011 Tan recovered her 70 reels of footage upon Cardona’s death—but, tragically, without the sound recordings. With no recourse for reclaiming the reels, “SHIRKERS” lingered on for Tan as a phantom limb until she decided to resuscitate what was left. Tan’s 2018 documentary of the same title as the incomplete film, SHIRKERS, collages together the luminous footage from her original feature with personal archival material, entrancing sound design, and contemporary interviews with friends and collaborators to tell the story of the stolen film.
Each of the recovered reels represent months of labor, and were the culmination of an entire youth and childhood spent dreaming, writing, and making art in a gutsy, non-conformist ethic. There’s no simple calculation for what happens when this material disappears. The cultural impact “SHIRKERS” had on Singapore, the film movements it inspired, the influence it exerted, the community it fostered—all these things belong to another world, humming tantalizingly beyond an elusive barrier parallel to our own.
Werner Herzog
103 MINUTES
Werner Herzog knows when he’s found the right subject for a film. But don’t ask him to explain; he just knows, that’s all. And he instantly knew he was destined to make GRIZZLY MAN.
Herzog’s 2003 film combines video footage shot by deceased grizzly-bear advocate Timothy Treadwell with recent interviews of his acquaintances and Herzog’s own often-contentious commentary about his subject. Treadwell desired to live near the bears in Alaskan wilderness and study them. He spent twelve summers doing so, producing a book and a television special. While aware of the dangers, Treadwell ascribed human-like qualities to the bears and sought a spiritual bond with them. But he and his girlfriend Amie were killed and eaten by one of the bears in October 2003. Treadwell left behind 100 hours of raw video footage. “I knew there was maybe 50 hours of just looking at bears, seeing them in a river or catching salmon, which would have constituted a very fine nature film”, Herzog says, “but my film is not a nature film. It’s a film about human nature.”
Herzog’s 2003 film combines video footage shot by deceased grizzly-bear advocate Timothy Treadwell with recent interviews of his acquaintances and Herzog’s own often-contentious commentary about his subject. Treadwell desired to live near the bears in Alaskan wilderness and study them. He spent twelve summers doing so, producing a book and a television special. While aware of the dangers, Treadwell ascribed human-like qualities to the bears and sought a spiritual bond with them. But he and his girlfriend Amie were killed and eaten by one of the bears in October 2003. Treadwell left behind 100 hours of raw video footage. “I knew there was maybe 50 hours of just looking at bears, seeing them in a river or catching salmon, which would have constituted a very fine nature film”, Herzog says, “but my film is not a nature film. It’s a film about human nature.”
