First

Join us on e-flux Video & Film for an online screening of Daniel Chew’s and Micaela Durand’s First (2019), on view from Tuesday, February 23 through Monday, March 8, 2021.

A teenager lives her life toggling seamlessly between her physical and digital self. She walks over a bridge at sunrise, follows a stranger through the streets of the city, and meets up with a friend to wander in their favorite spots in New York City. She documents all of this on her phone, sharing her life with the world by uploading these videos to her profile. Comments—in the form of subtitles—puncture this narrative. They range from casual banter with friends to threatening comments from strangers. The work is a glimpse into the realities that teenagers have to negotiate today—how they connect through personas and engage in random digital encounters, and how that in turn shapes them.

First is presented here as one of four films in Part Two | Virtually Yours, the second of five programs in the online film and video series True Fake: Troubling the Real in Artists’ Films programmed by Lukas Brasiskis for e-flux Video & Film.

True Fake runs from February 9 through April 19, 2021. The films in each part will screen for two weeks. Subsequent parts will follow bi-weekly, with new films screened every other Tuesday.

For more information, contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.