In a 1970 interview, Argentinian filmmaker Fernando Solanas described his attempt to build a filmmaking career as: ‘the solution that we found was to make a few commercials in order to be able to make another cinema’ (1970: 37). Commercials allowed Solanas’s group of filmmakers to hone their filmmaking craft and earn a living, while the ‘other cinema’ was a politically charged, independent form of filmmaking. To do this, the filmmakers needed to operate outside of a highly specialized film industry: >I am convinced [.] that the possibility of making a new cinema completely outside the system depends on whether or not film-makers can transform themselves from ‘directors’ into a sort of total film-maker. And no one can become a total film-maker without being a film technician, without being capable of handling the production (Solanas 1970: 38).< This chapter pays homage to Solanas’s idea of total filmmaking. What makes a ‘director’ outside of the highly specialized global film production centres in today’s digital age? Based on in-depth interviews with 29 independent filmmakers from all ten ASEAN countries, like Camera D’Or winner Anthony Chen, Tribeca Award nominee Nia Dinata, Lao’s first female filmmaker Mattie Do and their many peers that are still unknown at the global stage, I will describe how emerging South-East Asian filmmakers ‘direct’ their careers in the 21st century screen industries. By doing so, I will argue that the resourceful 21st century ‘director’, especially outside of national or global production centres, is a multi-skilled writer-director-producer (and often more) that takes advantage of opportunities, networks and technologies to make films, reach audiences, build their brand and, ultimately, ‘direct’ their careers. I will end the chapter by using Solana’s idea of total filmmaking to argue for a more holistic, cross-departmental, ‘total’ approach as a driving principle to film production education outside of national and global production centres ; Full Text