TICKETS $15

Doors 6:30 p.m.; Event 7 p.m.; Q&A after the film.

Click here to learn more about accessibility at the Tomorrow Theater. 

THE EXPERIENCE

A performance artist, filmmaker, and music video director (who has filmed videos for Angel Olsen, Beach House, Mitski, and Zola Jesus), Zia Anger struggled to finish her own feature film. After touring around the country with her live performance “My First Film”, Anger created a film about an artist struggling to create her first feature film. 

After the film, Carrie Brownstein will host a Q&A with Director of Photography Ashley Connor & Co-Writer Billy Feldman. 

ON SCREEN: My First Film

2024. Directed by Zia Anger. Runtime: 100 minutes. 

Follow a young filmmaker as she recounts the story of struggling to make her first feature. Fact bleeds into fiction, and past, present, and future converge to create a modern myth that redefines the very act of creation.

“Defies convention, challenging what a film can be and how an artist can relate to their audience.”–Dana Reinoos, HyperAllergic

“I have attended dozens, maybe hundreds, of talks about the lack of women feature film directors — an issue I care deeply about. But after a while, they all sound the same. Zia Anger has figured out a new way to discuss these issues, in an incredibly moving, personal, and creative way.”–Miriam Bale, Indie Memphis Artistic Director

ON STAGE

Carrie Brownstein; Billy Feldman (Co-Writer); Ashley Connor (Director of Photography)

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER

Zia Anger works in moving images. Her most recent short, My Last Film, premiered at the 53rd New York Film Festival. In 2015 her short I Remember Nothing premiered domestically at New Directors/New Films and internationally at Festival del film Locarno. She directed music videos for various independent artists including Angel Olsen, Mitski, Julianna Barwick, Beach House, Maggie Rogers, and Jenny Hval (who she also toured with as a performer and stage director). Various online publications including Pitchfork, the Guardian, and NPR have featured her music videos.

In 2016, Zia participated in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Intensive. In 2015, Filmmaker Magazine selected Zia as one of the year’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” She is also a 2015 New York Foundation for the Arts film/video fellow. In 2008, Panavision awarded her a New Filmmaker grant for her short film, Lover Boy.

From 2010 to 2012, she made a micro-budget feature film, Always All Ways, Anne Marie, in her hometown with some of her best friends and non-actors. Nobody saw the feature. She applied to nearly 50 festivals and was rejected by every one. Did you know that when nobody sees your first feature, you’re still considered a first time filmmaker?