This dissertation examines self-reflexivity and (inter)subjectivity in autobiographical film and video by women directors and artists through the emerging lens of autotheory. Through close readings of works by French directors Laetitia Masson and Agnès Varda, Argentine director Albertina Carri, Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo, and Latinx/Chicana performance artist Xandra Ibarra, I argue for the potential contributions of autotheoretical approaches in film and media studies by revisiting the question of the “I” in key debates on auteurism, spectatorship, and apparatus theory. I investigate how these artists engage in worldmaking projects by subverting formulaic narrative structures and generic expectations. In doing so, they disorient, obfuscate, and reorganize subjectivity, the “I,” and the gaze outlined by early debates in film and media studies. This dissertation introduces the palimpsext as a conceptual framework for analyzing autobiographical and intertextual...