Must-See Self-Directed Films

Sherlock Jr (1924) Directed by Buster Keaton 

Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr opens with the following title card: “there is an old proverb which says don’t try to do two things at once and expect to do justice to both”. Of course, this proverb speaks to the film’s premise, of a projectionist-cum-amateur-detective (played by Keaton) who dreams himself into the movie he’s screening. Soon discovering that this adage is more cavernous than it initially seems, we are tempted to consider its meta-cinematic potential. Indeed, “doing two things at once” refers to the very business of self-direction.

With unassailable charm and playfulness, and at a lean 45-minute run-time, Sherlock Jr is razor-sharp, bursting with inconceivable stunts and visual effects. Keaton fuses the roles of pioneer and performer; reveling in the duplicitous nature of cinema itself, and encouraging viewers’ participance. As one of the earliest contenders of cinema’s creative limits, and contradictory to the film’s proverbial allusion, Keaton boasts a momentous, near-impossible performance, proving that one can certainly do justice to both positions. 

Fireworks (1947) directed by Kenneth Anger 

Decades ahead of its time, Fireworks is a daring spectacle of homosexuality at a time of its illegality in the United States. Steeping fantasy with ideas that verge on camp, Kenneth Anger (notable underground short filmmaker) embodies the role of actor-director in order to elevate the self-awareness of his craft. The narrative sees a group of sailors strip and violently dissect a young man (played by Anger) to the startling discovery of a clock ticking inside his chest. 

Cigarettes, burning Christmas trees, topless men, Fireworks is riddled with mystery and indulgence. Ingeniously, with homoerotica bluntly flashing in and out of view, Anger directs himself at the centre of this queer dreamscape; he establishes himself as both artist and muse, advocate and trailblazer. 

Saute ma Ville (1968) directed by Chantal Akerman

 Chantal Akerman is a master of portraiture. Having directed a mixture of shorts and feature-length films, Akerman’s oeuvre is revered for its generous (and radical) insights into the lives of women, in tandem with an aesthetic style known for its observational quality. Her curiosities bend towards women’s quotidian behaviours in the context of their attribution to domestic spheres, with kitchens and bedrooms commonplace across her filmography. What sanctity can be afforded from spaces historically designated ‘for women’? How can upholding a camera to these interiors reframe their significance? These questions are central to Akerman’s work.

In Saute ma Ville, her earliest short film, we see Akerman play a solitary young woman who shuts herself in her apartment to waste the night away. Singing, humming, eating, the nameless woman sustains our intrigue, despite the ordinariness of her evening. Owed to its lyrical construction, (Saute ma Ville offers a feast of perplexing audio), Akerman encourages us to analyse the sensibilities of isolation; to not only recognise a disharmony between musicality and mundanity but to cherish their incompatibility. Marked by its climactic end, Saute ma Ville lays the groundwork for Akerman’s fascinations as an actor-director; she delights in seclusion, pushing ‘feminine’ spaces to the point of rupture.

Wanda (1970) Directed by Barbara Loden 

Wanda is not propelled by action, but emotion; the plot breathes quietly, only just out of stasis. Barbara Loden told The Los Angeles Times; “I had no identity of my own. I just became whatever I thought people wanted me to become”. As I researched this bracing film of placelessness and solitude, I found myself continually drawn back to Loden’s self-reflective words, tempted to reconcile their meaning with her only feature film. 

Wanda, (the titular character written, directed and played by Loden), is a rather saturated figure, one difficult to hold in view. Often depicted sleeping or quietly passing through her surroundings, she slips through the film as a symbol of displacement. Owed to the dichotomy of a writer portraying their own character, Loden is able to seamlessly entwine her own precarious identity to the fabric of her film. Wanda’s character withstands the hostility of the proletariat North-American rust-belt with undaunted femininity; her stoic glances, at odds with her quaint style of dress, reveal layers of subjectivity. And yet, Loden is reluctant to expose herself too intimately. Behind Wanda, she holds back. She allows, encourages us, even, to peek beneath the veneer, offering glimpses of her creativity and personhood - perhaps they come to mean the same thing.

A New Leaf (1971), directed by Elaine May 

Occupying a space between sugary farce and relentless irony - a proposal knelt on broken glass, no less - Elaine May’s debut is almost Shakespearean. A New Leaf is the 70s answer to 30s screwball comedy; a whimsical, sharp-witted love-story between hopeless inhabitants of the upper echelons of New York aristocracy. Starring May as the endearingly klutzy (and enormously wealthy) botanist, Henrietta, embroiled in the deceit of her newly bankrupt love-interest, Henry (played by Walter Matthau), A New Leaf is a film of tantalising self-awareness. 

Glasses fly off faces, Looney-Tunes-style violence frequently feels seconds away - chaos is hinged on a desire for permanence. Yet, Henrietta’s search for immortality, (her professional goal is to discover a plant species and therefore be immortalised by name), is seemingly incompatible within the nebula of slapstick comedy; a realm where nothing holds, and disaster looms at every bend. In a landscape of unpredictable shifts and turns of emotion, what binds Henrietta and Henry together? It seems it is the very subversion they stand for, combined with their ability to bounce off each other’s social ineptitudes, that bizarrely (wonderfully!) sutures them together. 

Matthau and May are larger than their roles; even their character names intimate a comic duo. Implicitly, and as gestured by May’s creative dexterity, we find ourselves engaging with A New Leaf as a dual entity; we soak up the romance and bask in the artifice.

The Watermelon Woman (1996) Directed by Cheryl Dunye

“I guess we have a few things in common, Miss Richards: the movies and the women”. Cheryl Dunye’s quasi-documentary is a fiercely accomplished study on filmmaking, sexuality, race, and systems of cultural erasure. Fronted by Dunye herself, Cheryl plays a video store clerk and videographer in the process of creating a documentary concerned with a subject culturally denied; the existence of Black lesbian actresses in 1930s cinema. Cheryl's titular subject is actress Fae Richards, credited as “the watermelon woman” for her mammy roles. To the detriment of Cheryl’s research, details of Richards’ life - including an interracial relationship with director Martha Page - are largely unrecorded. Herein lies the crux of Dunye’s commentary; Richards was not a real actress. Suitably, as the nucleus of this faux documentary, Richards never existed.

Precisely through the lens of faux-documentary, Dunye is able to demonstrate the erasure of Black lesbian history in and outside her film. Dunye as an actor plays the part of a researcher grappling with the lost history of a Black actress, meanwhile, Dunye as a filmmaker utilises the form of faux documentary to communicate the problem of erasure itself. Indeed, Dunye’s decision to invent Richards reveals the very erasure she critiques; it attests to the extent history is censored.
Thought to be the first US film directed by an out Black lesbian, The Watermelon Woman is timelessly important, funny, confident - it condemns the inaccessibility of this particular annal of Black history, all the while urging for its restoration.