MY FIRST FILM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 30, 2019
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEMORY and Cinema Guild proudly present the international tour of Zia Anger’s MY FIRST FILM: an expanded cinema performance in which the artist attempts to recount the stories behind her lost and abandoned work - including her first feature.
From Zia Anger, “Last year I Googled myself. I found my IMDB page, which listed my first attempt at a feature film as still being in “post-production.” In the interest of mitigating the risk of any potential financiers coming along and seeing that I had a film from 2012 still unfinished I emailed IMDB to ask if they could remove the listing. It had been automatically added when I used Withoutabox to apply to festivals and without proper release, the entry sat in limbo. I never heard back, and a month later I checked my page again, and was surprised to learn that instead of removing the listing, they had labeled it ‘abandoned' in red italic letters.
“My First Film” explores this “abandoned” mythos - from expired Instagram stories, to the nearly-finished feature I made in grad school. It erases the line drawn between a filmmaker's body and body of work. Lasting roughly 75 minutes, MY FIRST FILM reimagines the relationship between the audience, the filmmaker, the movie theatre, and the cinematic narrative, as I weave a narrative using real-time text, spontaneous Google searches, audience directives and AirDrops.”
Cinema Guild in partnership with MEMORY will bring Zia Anger’s MY FIRST FILM to theaters and college campuses internationally this Fall 2019. Dates and details as follow:
09/20-09/22 The Metrograph (New York, NY)
10/04 Block Cinema at Northwestern University (Chicago, IL)
10/06 Tacoma Film Festival (Tacoma, WA)
10/10 The Willard Straight Theater at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
10/16 Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri (Columbia, MO)
10/17 Radical Nonfiction at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)
10/19 Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbia, MO)
10/24 Milwaukee Film Festival (Milwaukee, WI)
11/09 Le Guess Who? (Utrecht, The Netherlands)
11/11 TBD (Berlin, Germany)
11/14 The Bellwether Series at Amherst Cinema (Amherst, MA)
11/16 The Rubenstein Art Center at Duke University (Durham, NC)
11/21 Now Instant Image Hall (Los Angeles, CA)
11/22 (Los Angeles, CA)
Previously, Zia Anger performed MY FIRST FILM at the Indie Memphis Film Festival (Memphis, 2018), the Downtown Independent (Los Angeles, 2018) as part of MEMORY’s Selective Memory film series, the Metrograph Theater (New York, 2019), and Sheffield Doc Fest (Sheffield, 2019).
To bring MY FIRST FILM to your theater, contact Tom Sveen at tom at cinemaguild.com.
About Zia Anger 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; the latter of whom 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 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.
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 it was rejected from every one. Did you know when nobody sees your first feature you’re still considered a first time filmmaker?
Website: http://www.ziaanger.com
About MEMORY MEMORY is an independent artist-driven motion picture studio specializing in producing and curating innovative, thought-provoking works that push the formal boundaries of their medium. Focused on discovering and mentoring new diverse voices, MEMORY creates and showcases these new compositions on and off-line.
Sebastian Pardo and Riel Roch-Decter founded MEMORY at the start of 2014 and together have produced and distributed award-winning fiction and non-fiction films, as well as having curated and hosted film-related events. These projects have premiered in renowned international festivals such as Venice, Berlinale, IFFRotterdam, Locarno, TIFF, SXSW, True / False, and AFI Fest. The films have played at prestigious institutions such as MoMA PS1, Tate Modern, MOCA, Gavin Brown Enterprise, ICA Miami, Lincoln Center, and the Harvard Film Archive, while MEMORY has hosted events at New York’s Metrograph Theater, Sundance Film Festival, Phi Centre and Montreal’s Museum of Art.
MEMORY has collaborated with multi-hyphenate filmmakers and artists to bring their debut films to fruition, such as: Celia Rowlson-Hall (Choreographer), Carson Mell (Animator), Dean Fleischer-Camp(Hard to Explain), Theo Anthony (Photo Journalist), and Leilah Weinraub (Fashion Design). In 2016 MEMORY was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, and in 2017 their film RAT FILM, by Theo Anthony, was nominated for a Gotham Award for Best Documentary Feature. Their most recent project SHAKEDOWN by Leilah Weinraub premiered at the 68th Berlin Film Festival.
Website: https://memory.is
About Cinema Guild Cinema Guild is a premier distributor of international cinema, independent films and documentaries, whose recent releases include Lucio Castro’s END OF THE CENTURY, Hong Sangsoo's HOTEL BY THE RIVER and the Academy Award®-nominated HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING. Upcoming theatrical releases include Wang Xiaoshuai’s CHINESE PORTRAIT, and Angela Schanelec’s I WAS AT HOME, BUT...
Website: http://www.cinemaguild.com
*******
Press for MY FIRST FILM
Abandoned Goods: Artists and Filmmakers Jillian Mayer and Zia Anger Talk about Anger’s Film/Performance MY FIRST FILM and the meanings of failure and success (Filmmaker Magazine) Reclaiming Failure: Zia Anger’s My First Film Performance (BFI Sight & Sound) In an Interactive Performance, a Filmmaker Dissects Her Abandoned Debut Feature (Hyperallergic)
“A reclamation of a ‘failed’ work and a rebuke of the independent film industry’s standards for success, My First Film plies the formal limits of a theatrical experience.” -Filmmaker Magazine
“Defies convention, challenging what a film can be and how an artist can relate to their audience.” -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, Artistic Director at Indie Memphis A cathartic collective experiment in what it might mean to challenge failure, recalibrate it, and reclaim it anew. -Sight and Sound
Connect with MEMORY
Instagram - @memory.is
Twitter - @MEMORYpresents
Connect with Zia Anger
Instagram - @zfoa
Twitter - @AngerZia
Connect with Cinema Guild
Instagram - @cinemaguild
Twitter - @cinemaguild
###
Zia Anger’s MY FIRST FILM Tour
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEMORY and Cinema Guild proudly present the international tour of Zia Anger’s MY FIRST FILM: an expanded cinema performance in which the artist attempts to recount the stories behind her lost and abandoned work - including her first feature.
From Zia Anger, “Last year I Googled myself. I found my IMDB page, which listed my first attempt at a feature film as still being in “post-production.” In the interest of mitigating the risk of any potential financiers coming along and seeing that I had a film from 2012 still unfinished I emailed IMDB to ask if they could remove the listing. It had been automatically added when I used Withoutabox to apply to festivals and without proper release, the entry sat in limbo. I never heard back, and a month later I checked my page again, and was surprised to learn that instead of removing the listing, they had labeled it ‘abandoned' in red italic letters.
“My First Film” explores this “abandoned” mythos - from expired Instagram stories, to the nearly-finished feature I made in grad school. It erases the line drawn between a filmmaker's body and body of work. Lasting roughly 75 minutes, MY FIRST FILM reimagines the relationship between the audience, the filmmaker, the movie theatre, and the cinematic narrative, as I weave a narrative using real-time text, spontaneous Google searches, audience directives and AirDrops.”
Cinema Guild in partnership with MEMORY will bring Zia Anger’s MY FIRST FILM to theaters and college campuses internationally this Fall 2019. Dates and details as follow:
09/20-09/22 The Metrograph (New York, NY)
10/04 Block Cinema at Northwestern University (Chicago, IL)
10/06 Tacoma Film Festival (Tacoma, WA)
10/10 The Willard Straight Theater at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)
10/16 Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri (Columbia, MO)
10/17 Radical Nonfiction at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)
10/19 Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbia, MO)
10/24 Milwaukee Film Festival (Milwaukee, WI)
11/09 Le Guess Who? (Utrecht, The Netherlands)
11/11 TBD (Berlin, Germany)
11/14 The Bellwether Series at Amherst Cinema (Amherst, MA)
11/16 The Rubenstein Art Center at Duke University (Durham, NC)
11/21 Now Instant Image Hall (Los Angeles, CA)
11/22 (Los Angeles, CA)
Previously, Zia Anger performed MY FIRST FILM at the Indie Memphis Film Festival (Memphis, 2018), the Downtown Independent (Los Angeles, 2018) as part of MEMORY’s Selective Memory film series, the Metrograph Theater (New York, 2019), and Sheffield Doc Fest (Sheffield, 2019).
To bring MY FIRST FILM to your theater, contact Tom Sveen at tom at cinemaguild.com.
About Zia Anger 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; the latter of whom 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 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.
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 it was rejected from every one. Did you know when nobody sees your first feature you’re still considered a first time filmmaker?
Website: http://www.ziaanger.com
About MEMORY MEMORY is an independent artist-driven motion picture studio specializing in producing and curating innovative, thought-provoking works that push the formal boundaries of their medium. Focused on discovering and mentoring new diverse voices, MEMORY creates and showcases these new compositions on and off-line.
Sebastian Pardo and Riel Roch-Decter founded MEMORY at the start of 2014 and together have produced and distributed award-winning fiction and non-fiction films, as well as having curated and hosted film-related events. These projects have premiered in renowned international festivals such as Venice, Berlinale, IFFRotterdam, Locarno, TIFF, SXSW, True / False, and AFI Fest. The films have played at prestigious institutions such as MoMA PS1, Tate Modern, MOCA, Gavin Brown Enterprise, ICA Miami, Lincoln Center, and the Harvard Film Archive, while MEMORY has hosted events at New York’s Metrograph Theater, Sundance Film Festival, Phi Centre and Montreal’s Museum of Art.
MEMORY has collaborated with multi-hyphenate filmmakers and artists to bring their debut films to fruition, such as: Celia Rowlson-Hall (Choreographer), Carson Mell (Animator), Dean Fleischer-Camp(Hard to Explain), Theo Anthony (Photo Journalist), and Leilah Weinraub (Fashion Design). In 2016 MEMORY was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, and in 2017 their film RAT FILM, by Theo Anthony, was nominated for a Gotham Award for Best Documentary Feature. Their most recent project SHAKEDOWN by Leilah Weinraub premiered at the 68th Berlin Film Festival.
Website: https://memory.is
About Cinema Guild Cinema Guild is a premier distributor of international cinema, independent films and documentaries, whose recent releases include Lucio Castro’s END OF THE CENTURY, Hong Sangsoo's HOTEL BY THE RIVER and the Academy Award®-nominated HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING. Upcoming theatrical releases include Wang Xiaoshuai’s CHINESE PORTRAIT, and Angela Schanelec’s I WAS AT HOME, BUT...
Website: http://www.cinemaguild.com
*******
Press for MY FIRST FILM
Abandoned Goods: Artists and Filmmakers Jillian Mayer and Zia Anger Talk about Anger’s Film/Performance MY FIRST FILM and the meanings of failure and success (Filmmaker Magazine) Reclaiming Failure: Zia Anger’s My First Film Performance (BFI Sight & Sound) In an Interactive Performance, a Filmmaker Dissects Her Abandoned Debut Feature (Hyperallergic)
“A reclamation of a ‘failed’ work and a rebuke of the independent film industry’s standards for success, My First Film plies the formal limits of a theatrical experience.” -Filmmaker Magazine
“Defies convention, challenging what a film can be and how an artist can relate to their audience.” -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, Artistic Director at Indie Memphis A cathartic collective experiment in what it might mean to challenge failure, recalibrate it, and reclaim it anew. -Sight and Sound
Connect with MEMORY
Instagram - @memory.is
Twitter - @MEMORYpresents
Connect with Zia Anger
Instagram - @zfoa
Twitter - @AngerZia
Connect with Cinema Guild
Instagram - @cinemaguild
Twitter - @cinemaguild
###
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