Project Detail

Self Made

Synopsis

Artist Gillian Wearing places an ad asking, 'Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character'.
 
Her film 'Self Made' documents the intense, revealing and sometimes disturbing experiences of seven people who sign up for the project. They take part in a series of workshops led by Method acting teacher Sam Rumbelow, who uses different techniques to help them access their memories and personal experiences so that each participant can create a vivid and authentic moment of performance. Gradually, we see five members of the group working towards their own individual end scenes, filmed dramatic vignettes that directly emerge from their personal histories. The scenes range from episodes of violence, to images of imagined love, via an excerpt from Shakespeare's King Lear. As the lights finally go off in the studio, the participants leave the experiment having for the first time confronted and articulated deep truths about themselves.

Details

Year
2011
Type of project
Features
Running time
84 mins
Format
4K Digital, 16mm, Tape
Director
Gillian Wearing 1st Feature
Producer
Lisa Marie Russo, Duane Hopkins
Co-Producer
Samm Haillay
Executive Producer
Marc Munden, Kate Ogborn
Editor
Daniel Goddard, Luke Dunkley
Screenwriter
Gillian Wearing, Leo Butler
Director of Photography
Roger Chapman
Production Designer
Jamie Leonard
Sound
Malcom Hirst, Tim Barker
Composer
Daniel Pemberton
Principal cast
Asheq Akhtar, Lesley Robinson, Dave Austin, James Baron, Lian Stewart, Simon Manley, Jerome Prince

Production Status

Production Company

Fly Film

63 Hornsey Lane Gardens
London
N6 5PA
UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 8340 3085

UK Film Council

British Film Institute
21 Stephen St
London
W1T 1LN
UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7255 1444

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

A man in a hospital chair sings surrounded by patients and hospital staff Stuck!

Director: Matt Nicholas

Year: 2026

Dr. Atkins, the hospital’s expert in removing “foreign objects”, finds himself in a bind when he forgets to get a present for his big wedding anniversary. When the perfect gift presents itself inside a patient, will he be willing to risk it all for love?

Emma emerges from her baptism. Born in Fire

Director: David Skynner

Year: 2026

A 50-year-old widow, Emma, has lost everything since her husband, Sam, was killed and her final refuge, a holiday lodge in Cornwall is due to be repossessed too. She is harried by debt collectors, seeing things, agoraphobic, and convinced she is losing her mind. Desperate, she calls for help from any God listening, and in a dark wood, something hears her. Her dead husband is haunting her and appears and talks to her in the dead of night. Emma’s starts to experience dreams of a magical wood and strange figures of butterflies and men made from twigs start to appear in and around the lodge. Sam is advising that she must let go of the old, in order let a new life in, but this terrifies Emma. Emma starts to see moments from her future; each bleaker than the last and fears for her own survival. With eviction imminent, Emma agrees she must surrender, whatever that might mean. A creature made from forest appears and helps her to escape. She follows it into the magical wood from her dreams and is baptised in a beautiful river. When she emerges, she is reborn and ready for her new life.

Image of a vicar holding up the eucharist. Matter of Britain

Director: Peter Treherne

Year: 2026

MATTER OF BRITAIN was an English country village’s performance of the Holy Grail myth. In that myth, King Arthur’s knights quest for the Holy Grail in order to heal their wasted land. The performance took place over 12 months from 2023 to 2024 in multiple locations across the parish of Mayfield, East Sussex. Over 300 members of the community took part as questing knights, angelic choirs, guiding anchorites and tempting devils. The performance was documented and subsequently made into an ethnographic fantasy that has screened at the Museum of Modern Art, CPH:DOX, Cinéma du Réel and Open City Documentary Film Festival. The work was supported by an Arts Council England Project Grant, the Lund Trust, High Weald AONB, East Sussex Arts Partnership, the University of Reading and the Museum of English Rural Life.