Self Made

Do you remember the British artist Gillian Wearing’s photos from the 1990s of people holding up cards on which they scrawled confessions? Now Wearing brings her studies in identity and self-projection to cinema with this record of a collaboration between her and Sam Rumbelow,
a London-based method-acting teacher. Seven non-actors, each with issues of varying complexity, answer an advert and join a cathartic workshop with Rumbelow to explore themselves through acting. What we witness is raw and uncomfortable as Rumbelow pushes them to reveal themselves. Five appear in short films: one deals with father issues by playing Cordelia in an extract from ‘King Lear’; another reflects relationship fears in a 1940s-set piece about courtship. Documentary segues into drama, and the film is a lucid précis of a project of great emotional intensity.