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Talkhouse

Zawe Ashton is a British actress, playwright, author and director who is currently starring in the period romantic dramedy <a href="https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/mr-malcolms-list/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mr. Malcolm’s List</a>, opposite Freida Pinto and Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù. Ashton’s portrayal of Vod in Channel 4’s Fresh Meat won her a cult following, and her other credits include the BBC/Netflix series Wanderlust and the feature Velvet Buzzsaw, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal, Toni Collette and Rene Russo. She recently wrapped production on Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, opposite Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris. Ashton recently starred in both the West End and on Broadway in the critically acclaimed revival of Betrayal, with Tom Hiddleston and Charlie Cox. In addition to being an accomplished actress, Ashton has also established herself as an award-winning writer, producer and director. She was the youngest winner of the London Poetry Slam Championship in 2000. Her debut play, Harm’s Way, was nominated for a Verity Bargate Award in 2007 and her directorial debut, Happy Toys, was nominated for Best British Short at the Raindance Film Festival in 2014. Ashton’s play For All the Women Who Thought They Were Mad was produced in London at the Hackney Showroom and at Soho Rep in New York. Her novel Character Breakdown was published by Penguin Books in 2019.

Zawe Ashton

Film

Three Great Things: Zawe Ashton

Dan Chen&#8216;s new Vimeo Staff Pick short documentary, <a href="https://vimeo.com/1032884093" target="_blank" rel="noopener">You&#8217;re Too Sensitive</a>, is now streaming. He developed his love of film as a Chinese-American teenager growing up in small-town Kansas. He picked up the camera to connect with others, partnering with friends to make elaborate coming-of-age movies, and documenting the moments they&#8217;d later be nostalgic for. He studied fine art film photography in college, and graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts focusing on cinematography and directing. His work at Jubilee Media has garnered over 100+ million views, and his films have been featured on Vimeo Staff Picks, Short of the Week, Slamdance Film Festival and most recently the 2021 Tribeca Festival, where he premiered his documentary feature debut, <a href="https://danchen.co/portfolio/accepted">Accepted</a>, to critical acclaim. Accepted follows four high school seniors at the controversial T.M. Landry school as they grapple with college admissions, national scandal, and the pains of growing up. Dan is currently based in Los Angeles, developing new projects as he prepares to direct his first narrative feature film. (Photo by Arielle Zakowski.)

Dan Chen

Why Media Representation Alone Will Never Make You Feel Accepted

Bryan Wizemann is an independent writer, producer, director and editor of film based in Brooklyn, NY. <a href="http://www.factorytwentyfive.com/you-mean-everything-to-me/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">You Mean Everything to Me</a>, his fourth feature film, stars Morgan Saylor, Ben Rosenfield and Lindsay Burge and is out December 17 through Factory 25. He previously wrote and directed About Sunny, starring Lauren Ambrose, Dylan Baker, and Penelope Ann Miller, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead, and was distributed by Oscilloscope. His feature Losing Ground was adapted from his critically acclaimed New York stage play and features the original cast. It premiered at Cinequest with distribution by FilmBuff. His first film, the experimental 16mm feature Sense, starring Maria Dizzia, was programmed at the Johnson Museum of Art and the Angelika Film Centre. (Image by Jeff Vespa, used with permission.)

Bryan Wizemann

Revisited: The Long Shadow of Las Vegas

Born to hippie artists, Jeremiah Zagar grew up in South Philly spending most afternoons in a dark movie theater or wandering the aisles of his local TLA video store. Later, on trips home from Emerson College, he started filming his parents, resulting in the documentary, In A Dream, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and screened theatrically across the US and in film festivals around the world. It was broadcast on HBO, shortlisted for an Academy Award and received two Emmy nominations, including Best Documentary. His next feature-length documentary, Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart, premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on HBO to much fanfare in 2014. He directed and co-wrote the feature We The Animals – based on Justin Torres&#8217; best-selling novel of the same name – which was selected for the Sundance Directing and Screenwriting Lab fellowships and premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. His latest work, the documentary series <a href="https://bit.ly/3qMu0my" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Fix</a>, based on Johann Hari&#8217;s book Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, is now streaming on Roku.j

Jeremiah Zagar

Ball Screen

Multi-talented singer, songwriter, filmmaker, sustainability advocate and one-woman tour de force Mogli has released Ravage, her gorgeous, ethereal indie-pop album, plus an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xBK7H9TkEg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">epic companion film</a> of the same name that shares a cathartic journey of self-discovery and healing, featuring 10 songs from Ravage, metaphorical dance, breathtaking cinematography, and a narrative that charts a dystopian to utopian transformation. An advocate for sustainability, Mogli recently created her second sustainable capsule clothing line – the Conscious Capsule Collection – with ABOUT YOU (one of the largest fashion and lifestyle platforms in Europe), inspired by the seven emotions portrayed in Ravage. Mogli also recently teamed up with Tommy Hilfiger to host a free online course exploring sustainable living. She incorporates sustainability into all of her creative endeavors (like her Netflix film, Expedition Happiness, which documented the making of her debut album, Wanderer, and saw her travel North America in a sustainably converted school bus. (Photo by Giulia Daley.)

Mogli

How I Translated My Emotions into a Meta Layer in My Movie

Shannon Plumb has shot over 200 short films, which have been exhibited in museums, galleries, and on international screens. She started by shooting herself as various characters, acting out three-minute situations using humor and silence as her vehicles for storytelling. In 2013, her first feature film, Towheads, premiered at MoMA as part of New Directors / New Films; it is now streaming on the <a href="https://www.criterionchannel.com/towheads" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Criterion Channel</a>. You can see her short films at <a href="http://shannonplumb.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shannonplumb.com</a> and Towheads is available on Netflix and iTunes. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, director Derek Cianfrance, and their two sons.

Shannon Plumb

Becoming Coach Shannon

Puerto Rican actress Natasha López can currently be seen as Charisse on HBO’s sci-fi romantic drama series The Time Traveler’s Wife, which has earned her acclaim for her outstanding performance alongside costar Desmin Borges. She has also appeared on the comedy series How Did That Happen? as well as NBC’s hit crime drama series Law And Order: Special Victims Unit. López made her feature film debut in 2013 in the crime thriller Runner Runner alongside Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck. López received her bachelor’s degree in communications with a minor in theatre from Sagarado Corazon University. Lopez currently resides in New York. (Photo by Sam Ortiz.)

Natasha López

Pelo Malo, or How Wearing My Natural Hair on TV Helped Heal My Self-Image

Emily Branham is a director, producer and editor in NYC who makes films about artists and creative thinkers. Her debut feature documentary, Being BeBe, about BeBe Zahara Benet (winner of the first season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race), is out now on VOD through Giant Pictures and airs on Fuse on June 21. Her short documentary Legend: a film about Greg Garing won the jury prize for Best Film of the International Doc Challenge at Hot Docs in Toronto, then screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest, IDFA, Nashville, Big Sky, Rooftop Films, and on the Documentary Channel. Originally from Minneapolis, Emily was a child actor who earned her SAG-AFTRA card at five years old, and found her happy place both on- and off-stage at the Guthrie Theater and Children’s Theater Company. When she discovered that filmmaking combined all of the many varied art forms she loved, she studied Radio/TV/Film (on the directing track) at Northwestern University and has been happily behind the camera &amp; edit suite ever since.

Emily Branham

Being BeBe: No Acting Please

Nico Muhly is a New York-based composer and songwriter. He has collaborated with Björk, the National, Philip Glass, Usher, Antony and the Johnsons and Bonnie &#8220;Prince&#8221; Billy, among others. You can follow him on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/nicomuhly">here</a> and visit his website <a href="http://nicomuhly.com/">here</a>.

Nico Muhly

Three Great Things: Nico Muhly

Sarah Elizabeth Mintz is a writer/director working in New York and Los Angeles. She received her BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she completed her thesis film Transit, starring Dakota Johnson. After graduating she assisted filmmakers Alejandro Iñárritu on The Revenant, Joachim Trier on Louder Than Bombs, and Cary Fukunaga on True Detective. Sarah was a Sundance Fellow in the 2017 Writer’s Intensive with her feature Good Girl Jane. She directed a proof-of-concept short film of the same name, which garnered interest and financing for the feature. Good Girl Jane recently premiered in U.S. Narrative Competition at Tribeca Film Festival 2022 and won the Founders Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature as well as Best Performance in a Narrative Feature for Rain Spencer. The film is written by Mintz and is inspired by events in her own life. Sarah is interested in stories that explore the complexities of human nature and the beauty that lies in gray areas that are often overlooked.

Sarah Elizabeth Mintz

I Am a Coming-of-age Drama

Mark O&#8217;Brien is an award-winning actor/filmmaker whose feature directorial debut, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFpwR9UjWM" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Righteous</a>, which he also wrote and starred in opposite Henry Czerny, premiered at the 2021 Fantasia Film Festival (where it won Best Screenplay) and is available to stream in the US on June 10 from Arrow Video. Nick Allen of RogertEbert.com said the film “displays an ambitious leader of performances and someone with ideas that continue the conversations from Bergman’s best.” As an actor, Mark has starred in Showtime’s City on a Hill, opposite Kevin Bacon, and AMC’s critically acclaimed Halt and Catch Fire and Amazon’s The Last Tycoon, opposite Kelsey Grammer, Lily Collins and Matt Bomer. In 2016, he starred in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival which went on to garner eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. Other films include Marriage Story, opposite Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, the box-office hit Ready or Not for Fox Searchlight, and Jason Retiman’s The Front Runner, starring Hugh Jackman. In 2020, Mark won the Canadian Screen Award (Canada’s Oscar) for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his performance in the film Goalie.

Mark O’Brien

What’s Going to Happen Next

Cecilia Suárez can currently be seen in the indie horror-thriller <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldSbEpwQIdE" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Passenger</a>, directed by Raúl Cerezo and Fernando González Gómez which is out now through Dark Star Pictures, and the ABC drama Promised Land, opposite John Ortiz. For three seasons, she starred in the hit Netflix series set in Mexico, La Casa de las Flores, and became the first Mexican actress to be nominated for an international Emmy® Award for her role in the HBO series Capadocia. Her other recent TV credits include Amazon Prime&#8217;s 3 Caminos and Lifetime&#8217;s For the People and her past film work includes Overboard, James L. Brooks Spanglish, and Tommy Lee Jones’ Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Based on her long track record of public advocacy for gender equality in her home country of Mexico, Suárez was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to be a U.N. Global Advocate for the Spotlight Initiative, the world&#8217;s largest targeted effort to end all forms of violence against women and girls.