First Features
The first time’s a charm for certain filmmakers, a fact attested to by the films gathered together in this collection of distinctive feature film debuts, the works of audacious young talents who came onto their sets with a lifetime of ideas about cinema stored up and ready to be put to the test. A selection of auspicious beginnings that not only show the promise of mature masterpieces to come, but are great films in their own right.
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Our Nixon
Directed by Penny Lane | 85 mins | 2013
Using an array of archival materials including television interviews, Nixon’s secretly recorded White House tapes, and more than 500 reels of long-out-of-circulation Super 8 home movies by presidential aides Dwight Chapin, John Ehrlichman, and H.R. Haldeman... -
The Stolen Man
Directed by Matías Piñeiro | 92 mins | 2007
Piñeiro’s delightful debut feature skips along with a coterie of Buenos Aires friends, galvanized by one devilishly playful woman with a penchant for games of love and chance. With New Wave brio, the film kicks off Piñeiro’s cycle of contagiously rhythm... -
Exit Elena
Directed by Nathan Silver | 72 mins | 2012
One of the great under-the-radar debuts, Silver’s sly comedy drops a twenty-something nursing aide (Kia Davis) into a suburban house where her kibitzing employer—played by the director’s scene-stealing mom—keeps drawing her into drama and chit chat. Show... -
Go Down Death
Directed by Aaron Schimberg | 88 mins | 2013
Schimberg’s uncanny debut feature is a handcrafted American Gothic pastiche that’s like sitting in on hidden scenes from the 19th century. Lost soldiers, ghosts and lovers, schoolhouse lessons and cabaret songs—these dispatches from the past possess th... -
It Felt Like Love
Directed by Eliza Hittman | 82 mins | 2013
There’s not a single false moment in It Felt Like Love, Never Rarely Sometimes Always director Hittman’s feature debut about a sexually inexperienced south Brooklyn teenager (Gina Piersanti) who’s embarrassed to fess up to everything she doesn’t know abo... -
Variety
Directed by Bette Gordon | 100 mins | 1983
A young woman lands a job as a cashier at a downtown porno theater, and soon finds herself inexorably drawn towards what’s happening onscreen—as well as other troubling fantasies. One of the great independent films of the ’80s, featuring a who’s who of t...
