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Talkhouse

Claudia Weill is a film, television and theatre director. Her feature films include Girlfriends, It’s My Turn, and the Academy Award-nominated The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir. She has directed theatre at Williamstown, the O’Neill, Sundance, ACT, Manhattan Theatre Club, the Public Theatre (Donald Margulies’ Found A Peanut), Pasadena Playhouse, EST and Irish Rep (The Belle of Belfast). Weill&#8217;s TV work includes Sesame Street, Thirtysomething (Emmy), My So-Called Life, Face of a Stranger (Emmy for Gena Rowlands) and Girls (HBO). She teaches TV Directing at the New School and Columbia University and serves on the Executive Committee for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, to which she was the third woman admitted as a director in 1981.

Claudia Weill

Film

From Girlfriends to Girls and Beyond

Matthew Porterfield has written and directed four feature films, Hamilton (2006), Putty Hill (2011), I Used To Be Darker (2013) and <a href="http://sollerspoint.oscilloscope.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sollers Point</a>, which opens in New York on May 18 and Los Angeles on May 25. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Harvard Film Archive and has screened at the Whitney Biennial, the Walker Arts Center, Centre Pompidou, Cinémathèque Française, and film festivals such as Sundance, the Berlinale, and SXSW. His first narrative short, Take What You Can Carry, premiered in the Shorts Competition in Berlin in 2015. Matthew teaches screenwriting, theory, and film production at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and is currently developing his next feature, Check Me In Another Place. (Photo by Matisse Rifai.)

Matthew Porterfield

A Filmmaker’s Guide to Beating Writer’s Block

Writer-director Dominic Savage became involved with film at an early age, appearing at age 10 in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. After graduating from the National Film and Television School in 1991, he made a series of documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC. As a fiction filmmaker, he has written and directed the television films Nice Girl (2000), When I Was 12 (2001), Out of Control (2002) and Freefall (2009), as well as the two-part film Dive (2010), starring Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan and Gina McKee, and the fully improvised drama Born Equal (2007), starring Colin Firth, Anne-Marie Duff, Robert Carlyle and David Oyelowo. His TV series include True Love (2012), a semi-improvised five-part drama starring David Tenant, and The Secrets (2014), a five-part BBC drama series of standalone single films starring Olivia Colman, Alison Steadman and Emilia Fox. He made his feature debut in 2005 with the award-winning Love + Hate, and his second feature, The Escape, starring Gemma Arterton and Dominic Cooper, is now in theaters through IFC Films.

Dominic Savage

Blurring Fiction and Reality

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Cynthia Hill lives and works in North Carolina. Hill’s company, Markay Media, which has produced award-winning documentary films and television work, is based in Durham. Hill and chef Vivian Howard recently took home an Emmy for outstanding culinary program for A Chef’s Life, the docu-series they co-created which airs on PBS to an audience of 4 million viewers per episode. Hill previously won an Emmy for directing the show, which has recently concluded its fifth season. She also directed the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary Private Violence, and an eight-part series on NASCAR called Road to Race Day for Complex Networks. (Picture by Jeremy Lange.)

Cynthia Hill

How to Make It as a Filmmaker Outside New York and Los Angeles

Writer-director Michael Pearce was born and raised in Jersey, and studied Film Directing at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth and the National Film &amp; Television School, where his graduation film, Madrugada, won Best Short at The Royal Television Society Awards. His next short film, Rite, was nominated at the 2011 BAFTAs and BIFAs, and his 2013 short Keeping Up with the Joneses was nominated at the 2014 BAFTAs and BIFAs. In 2013 Michael was selected to be part of Channel 4’s Coming Up scheme, through which he made Henry, his debut TV drama. His debut feature, <a href="https://www.beastthefilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Beast</a>, starring Jessie Buckley and Johnny Flynn, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is in theaters through Roadside Attractions from May 11.

Michael Pearce

Under the Influence

Dan Gregor&#8216;s first feature as writer-director working in film and TV. He is currently a writer on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and his past TV credits include How I Met Your Mother, The Comedians and Adult Swim&#8217;s NTSF:SD:SUV. His debut feature as writer-director, <a href="http://lionsgateathome.com/most-likely-to-murder" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Most Likely to Murder</a> starring Adam Pally, Rachel Bloom and Vincent Kartheiser, is now available on VOD.

Dan Gregor

My Porno Tape Story

Brendon Small is a director and stand up comic. He’s also the creator, writer, and musician behind the animated series Metalocalypse and Home Movies and the band Dethklok. Look for the album Galaktikon II: Become the Storm and the Galaktikon comic from Albatross Comics. (Picture by Jim Donnelly.)

Brendon Small

The Sci-Fi That Ignited My Brain

Natalia Almada is a director, writer, producer and editor who was a 2012 MacArthur “Genius Award” Fellow and recipient of the 2009 Sundance Documentary Directing Award for her film El General. <a href="https://www.cinematropical.com/new-events/new-york-theatrical-release-of-natalia-almadas-everything-else" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Todo lo demás </a>(Everything Else), Almada’s debut feature fiction film, is released theatrically on May 4. Her 2011 film El Velador, about violence in Mexico, premiered at New Directors/New Films and played as part of the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight. Her previous credits include All Water Has a Perfect Memory, an experimental short film that premiered at Sundance in 2002, and Al Otro Lado, her 2005 award-winning debut feature documentary on immigration, drug trafficking and corrido music. Almada graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and currently lives between Mexico City and San Francisco.

Natalia Almada

The Invisible Woman

Paul Feig is a director, writer, producer and actor working in film and television. He is the creator of the beloved TV series Freaks and Geeks, and has directed episodes of numerous shows, including, The Office, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation and Mad Men. His recent films as director include Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy and Ghostbusters, all of which star Melissa McCarthy. His latest feature, the thriller A Simple Favor, starring Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively, came out in September. He lives in Los Angeles.

Paul Feig

Alia Shawkat, actress (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0790057/" target="_blank">imdb</a>), writer (of this piece) and artist, tells us about A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour. You can see her artwork at <a href="http://www.mutantalia.com" target="_blank">mutantalia.com</a>.

Alia Shawkat

Miguel Arteta is a Puerto Rican filmmaker currently living in Los Angeles. His latest film, Beatriz at Dinner, written by regular collaborator Mike White and starring Salma Hayek, John Lithgow, Connie Britton and Jay Duplass, was released by Roadside Attractions earlier this summer . He won an Independent Spirit Award for his first feature, Chuck &amp; Buck (2000), written by Mike White. It premiered and found distribution at the Sundance Film Festival, as did Star Maps (1997) and The Good Girl (2002). Has also directed Youth in Revolt (2009), with Michael Cera; Cedar Rapids (2011), with Ed Helms and John C. Reilly; and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014), with Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner. Arteta’s TV work includes Freaks and Geeks, The Office, Six Feet Under, Enlightened, New Girl, Nurse Jackie, The Big C, American Horror Story and Getting On. He studied film with Jeanine Basinger at the Wesleyan Film Program and has taught at the Sundance Institute’s Directors Labs and at the Middle Eastern Film Lab in Jordan. (Picture by Lacey Terrell.)

Miguel Arteta

Your favorite musicians, filmmakers, and other creative minds one-on-one. No moderator, no script, no typical questions. The Talkhouse Podcast offers unique insights into creative work from all genres and generations. <a href="https://pod.link/Talkhouse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Subscribe now</a>, and explore more illuminating shows on the <a href="https://talkhouse.com/category/podcast" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Talkhouse Podcast Network.</a>

Talkhouse Podcast

Podcast

Paul Feig (Spy) Talks with Alia Shawkat and Miguel Arteta (Duck Butter) for the Talkhouse Podcast

Bobby Miller is a filmmaker and author from New Jersey who lives in Los Angeles. His films have premiered at Sundance, SXSW and Fantasia. His debut novel, Situation Nowhere, is available now. Learn more at: <a href="http://www.SituationNowhere.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SituationNowhere.com</a>.

Bobby Miller

How I Made “Emo Gremlins” (With a Little Bit of Help)

Tamer El Said is a filmmaker living between Berlin and Cairo, where he was born in 1972. He studied filmmaking and journalism and went on to make many documentaries and short films that received several international and local awards. Tamer founded Zero Production in 2007 to produce independent films. He is also a co-founder of <a href="http://cimatheque.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cimatheque</a> – Alternative Film Centre in Cairo, a multipurpose space that provides facilities, training and programing for the independent filmmaking community. <a href="http://bigworldpictures.org/films/inthelastdaysofthecity/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In the Last Days of the City</a>, his first feature film, plays in select theaters from April 27 through Big World Pictures.

Tamer El Said

A Journey Through Doubts, Memories and Streets

Ashley Bell is the author of Shoot it. Sell it. Show it. How I Made an Independent Film With Grit &amp; Google and the director, writer and producer of <a href="http://loveandbananas.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Love &amp; Bananas: An Elephant Story</a>, which is out through Abramorama in April, starting with special screenings on Earth Day, April 22.