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This intriguing feature-length documentary by 1997 Turner prize artist Gillian Wearing is simple in conception and infinitely complex, both morally and aesthetically, in execution. A newspaper ad invites members of the public to participate in a method-acting experiment that would lead to them discovering their inner selves, which would be realised through scenes dramatising their alter egos. Seven applicants, mostly from the north-west of England, are chosen, all go through classes conducted by the charismatic teacher Sam Rumbelow, and five are channelled into mini-films that range through a troubled daughter playing Cordelia, a professional Lear, a would-be suicide identifying with the last days of Mussolini, and a sad 40-year-old romantic casting herself as a working-class Celia Johnson in a deadly serious reworking of Brief Encounter. This is a glib, exploitative project that toys with vulnerable people. It is perhaps of limited interest to popular audiences, but of value to film and drama students.

Gillian Wearing is the latest art-world figure to make a feature film, but her concept of workshops and fictional alter-egos is less than convincing

The artist Gillian Wearing has made a film that is an interesting but unsatisfying experiment. Through ads in the press, she invited members of the public to take part in exploratory improvisational workshops with Method acting coach Sam Rumbelow, there to recall feelings and memories, and then to devise personae who were fictional variants on their real selves, which she would make the centre of filmed vignettes. There are undoubtedly some painful, powerful moments here, but the emotions and ideas sometimes looked glib and superficial, and I wondered if the thoughts and memories being recovered were, in a sense, the product of improv groupthink: an assumption that anger, pain and rage – particularly for the men – are the most authentic and valid things to retrieve through this process.

People open up to Gillian Wearing. So the artist made a feature film in which members of the public divulge their innermost secrets – with shocking results

At the Turner prize ceremony in 1997, Gillian Wearing drank a bottle and a half of champagne before the main announcement. She was on the shortlist, but assumed she wouldn't win. The whole scene was pretty overwhelming back then, she says. Interest in young British artists was at its height, the ceremony was televised, and the fascination around the prize kept building. Two years later, there would be frenzied debate over Tracey Emin's unmade bed, and two years after that would come the screaming celebrity zenith, when Madonna turned up to hand over the award.

After Wearing's name was read out that night, she made it to the stage, thanked her family, then drew a blank. "One of my friends lives in Amsterdam," she says,...

Self Made is the feature film debut of Gillian Wearing, an artist who emerged in the unofficial movement (yet branded by the international art world) Yba, or Young British Artist. Wearing’s work has always dealt with identity and its performance, working in various art movements which I believe to be organic, not a reaction to the global art market, but I’m just a naive film reviewer.

Before I get myself into any trouble I shall describe Wearing’s Self Made. She puts an ad out online: “Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character. Call Gillian.” From the self-selected pool she chooses her collaborators: seven strangers were chosen from hundreds, all with unique and at times rather mundane narratives. Wearing hires a method acting coach, Sam Rumbelow to work with the group, and together they craft “scenes” addressing their greatest...

Documentary Fortnight, MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media, kicked off its 10th season last night with the world premiere of Self Made. The film, a first for British artist (and Turner Prize winner) turned filmmaker Gillian Wearing, takes the audience through the cathartic process of a Method Acting class populated by a small group of hand-picked non-professionals and led by acting teacher, Sam Rumbelow. The movie shows how strong performances can result from emotional excavation. It’s a raw and emotionally powerful film and one that makes clear that Method Acting, first invented by Stanislavski over a hundred years ago, is still relevant.

As will be the case in most of the screenings in the festival, there to introduce Self Made and to take questions afterward were director Wearing, Rumbelow and one of the actor participants, Lian Stewart. Because of the demanding emotional work required by those who participated in the film,...

Year: 2010

Directors: Gillian Wearing

Writers: Leo Butler

IMDb: link

Trailer: link

Review by: Ben Austwick

Rating: 9 out of 10

Gillian Wearing is the latest British contemporary artist to turn to cinema, her low key pieces on identity transferring well to the big screen. So well in fact, she may have found her perfect medium, her formerly impact-based work being given room to deepen and expand, bringing her subjects to the fore.

In an approach in tune with her previous artwork, Wearing sets up a situation, stands back and follows its progress rather than planning the film from beginning to end, placing advertisements asking for potential actors to come forward, filming their training and asking them to construct a story they will star in themselves. Method acting teacher Sam Rumbelow provides the training, taking the amateur actors through various exercises in a drama workshop. These uninhibited, noisy activities bring jokes and laughter,...