This World Is Not My Own (SXSW 2023) (Review)

Receiving its world premiere at the SXSW festival this week is This World Is Not My Own, a film about a remarkable artist you’ve probably never heard of, yet by the time the credits roll she may well become a new favourite.

Nellie Mae Rowe was born on the 4th of July 4, 1900. But ‘Independence Day’, meant little to either of her parents, who had been born into slavery in the Deep South. As she grew, Nellie Mae Rowe experienced first-hand racial discrimination and segregation, the Great Depression, two world wars and the struggle for civil rights. It was a life that spanned the 20th century, and for a significant duration of it, Nellie made art in obscurity. Ever thankful for her God-given talent, Nellie transformed her home in Georgia into her ‘Playhouse,’ an oasis filled with vibrant drawings, handmade sculptures (often from chewing gum!) and a series of dolls, and collected objects, putting them to creative uses. These colourful works of art, shaped by her experiences both personal and political but interpreted through a unique, singular perspective, would catch the attention of Judith Alexander, a wealthy Jewish gallerist who became Nellie’s patron and greatest friend in the last six years of her life.

An American/Swedish co-production directed by Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell and written by Ringbom and Ruchi Mital, This World Is Not My Own is a film as unique and beautiful as Nellie’s own work. Comprising four acts and the occasional interlude, this innovative documentary mixes the traditional tropes one expects from the genre – interviews with Nellie’s family, friends and admirers, archival footage – with dramatised recreations of her life via remarkable animated sequences that take place within intricately detailed sets that not only conjure up the ‘Playhouse’ to audiences but also brings forth the tumultuous twentieth century too. Throughout these impressive scenes, Nellie and Judith are brought to life by compelling and effective voice work from actors Uzo Aduba (Orange is the New Black, Lightyear) and Amy Warren (Gravity, Mistress America).

It’s great to see in 2023 a film that not only champions the work of female creatives but also celebrates their friendship as well. Though they met late in Nellie’s life, the relationship the artist had with her greatest supporter is a definitive one that the film rightly highlights. Whilst on paper one would expect these two strong-willed independent women, each from completely different racial, cultural and class backgrounds, to have precious little in common, in reality, they formed an unbreakable bond based on their mutual love of art and their shared sense of being outsiders within a predominantly white Christian, patriarchal society.

But more than that, This World Is Not My Own, showcases another bond between the pair. Unfolding alongside Nellie’s story is one of the most notorious murder cases of the last century; the murder of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan in 1913 and the conviction, appeals and subsequent lynching of the man arrested for the crime, the thirty-one-year-old Jewish factory superintendent Leo Frank. A heinous shame-filled stain in American history, the case stoked the fires of religious intolerance from far-right groups such as the KKK, the fall-out as tragic as the violent demise of the poor, unfortunate Phagan. It was Judith’s lawyer father who played a central role in Frank’s defence, but we discover that coincidentally Nellie too had her own connection to this infamous case. It is in these sequences that we find that Ringbom and Stillwell’s film is suddenly transformed into an engrossing historical true-crime documentary.

A textbook definition of folk art is a form of visual art, the pieces of which are often practical as opposed to purely decorative and fit within a populist tradition regarding cultural heritage. Like the art and artist it comes to celebrate, This World Is Not My Own is at its best when it pursues less conventional techniques that are nevertheless still recognisably in keeping with the wider context of what an audience will appreciate as a biographical documentary. As an artist Nellie was instinctive and spiritual, accuracy was not her concern. Likewise, Ringbom and Stillwell have rightly sought to capture an innate truth and understanding, rather than a factual, historical record. In bringing Nellie to audiences, mythology and character is as much at play as indeed it was in the artist’s own work. One of Nellie’s constant subjects was an Afro-American wrestler Claude ‘Thunderclap’ Patterson, whom the filmmakers thankfully track down to unite him with her appreciation. There’s a delicious irony in her appreciation of wrestling because, like her own artwork, it is a visual display unconcerned with realism; preferring character, myth-building and a more spiritual reading of what constitutes the truth. For Nellie, Patterson was no mere grappler, here was a Black man with a licence to go out there and hit white men, a spectacle that was broadcast to the whole of America at a time when segregation meant that a Black person wasn’t allowed to sit next to a white person on a bus. More, Patterson was an outspoken character whose highlighting of his experiences of systematic racism within the profession and the need for union representation led to his eventual blacklisting by the National Wrestling Alliance in the early 1970s. It’s easy to see why a folk artist like Nellie Mae Rowe would seek to mythologise a figure whose actions transcended the populist form of entertainment he worked within, just as it’s easy to see why Nellie herself needs elevating from the status of obscure folk art to a more widespread, recognised and respected appreciation. This World Is Not My Own is hopefully the vehicle to do this.

Mark’s Archive: This World is Not My Own