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Talkhouse

Sophia Peer was born and raised in Flushing, Queens, where she began her career as filmmaker, directing her parents in scripted/doc hybrids before she knew that was even a thing. She was awarded the NY Foundation for the Arts &#8216;Made In NY&#8217; grant, a finalist for the ScreenCraft Film Fund, accepted into The Gotham’s Episodic Lab, and invited to Gotham Week, for <a href="https://slamdance2023.eventive.org/films/638ae6d0e1cb7c0055272358" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Who’s Annie?</a>, a series she’s creating, writing and directing which premieres at the Slamdance Film Festival on January 22. Sophia is currently pitching a series she’ll be directing, created in collaboration with Jigsaw Productions. After years of working on series for Nike, Super Deluxe, Nylon, Genius, and Pitchfork, Sophia is now also directing a surreal cooking show, Danny’s Food Corner, starring queer comedian Lily Marotta (Celebrity Book Club). Sophia’s work has been screened at the Whitney Museum of Art, Hauser &amp; Wirth, Abrons Art Center, the Giphy Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Contemporary Arts Center, The Queens Museum, Indie Memphis Film Festival, and MoMa. She has directed music videos for artists such as Paramore, Julien Baker, Paramore, The National, Interpol, Yeasayer, and Junior Boys. (Photo by Matthew Spiegelman.)

Sophia Peer

Film

Turning My Childhood Home into a Film Set

Kimi Takesue is an award-winning filmmaker working in documentary, experimental and narrative genres. Her latest film, <a href="http://www.onlookersfilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Onlookers</a>, premieres at the Slamdance Film Festival on January 21. Takesue’s films have screened at more than 250 film festivals and museums internationally including Locarno, Toronto, Sundance, New Directors /New Films, Slamdance, SXSW, and MoMA and have aired on PBS, IFC, and the Sundance Channel. Takesue is the recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, as well as the “Breakthrough Award” and fellowship from Chicken and Egg Pictures recognizing women who have made significant contributions to the documentary field. Takesue’s previous feature documentary, <a href="http://www.95and6togo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">95 And 6 To Go</a>, was nominated for the 2017 European Doc Alliance Award and screened at over 25 international film festivals, including CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, BAFICI, FID:Marseille, DOC NYC, and Dok Leipzig. Her films are distributed by Women Make Movies, New Day Films, and the Criterion Channel. Takesue is Professor in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at Rutgers University-Newark. Find out more at <a href="http://www.kimitakesue.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">kimitakesue.com</a>. (Picture by Richard Beenen.)

Kimi Takesue

Seeing and Seeking

Sean Crampton is an award-winning actor and hands-on independent producer based out of Los Angeles. His latest film, The Stalking Fields, which he co-wrote, produced and stars in, is out now on digital through Gravitas Ventures. Sean most recently wrote and directed the pilot episode of Helmet (2023) for Bart Rome. During the pandemic he produced two feature films; The Wheel for Steve Pink, which had its world premiere at TIFF in 2021, and Good Bad Things for Shane Stanger (2023).His first feature film, Richard Peter Johnson (2014) can be seen everywhere on demand.

Sean Crampton

My Dad Killed Himself From PTSD

Melissa Lesh, with Trevor Frost, directed the documentary <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wildcat-Melissa-Lesh/dp/B0B6NWQ7JJ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wildcat</a> – about a British soldier with PTSD and an American scientist who together raise an ocelot to release back into the wild – which is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. She founded the production company Emerging Earth Films as a way to bridge the gap between the arts and sciences, focusing on natural history and conservation stories. Her first award-winning documentary, James River Sturgeon, was a collaboration with scientists to uncover the uncharted migration of the endangered Atlantic sturgeon. Lesh is the co-director and editor of Person of the Forest and has worked for such clients as Nat Geo Wild, National Geographic magazine and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Lesh was born in Mumbai, grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and lives in Richmond, Virginia. (Photo by Berkley Nestler.)

Melissa Lesh

To the Rainforest’s Credit

Deborah Goodwin is a writer-director-producer whose work in film and television began as a development executive for Sanford-Pillsbury Productions (Desperately Seeking Susan, River’s Edge, How to Make an American Quilt). Deborah’s Urbanworld Film Festival Best Screenplay win for her darkly provocative family drama Cherrys launched her filmmaking path. She has written for Emmy-winning and Independent Spirit Award-nominated producers, and for shows like the cult favorite horror series Tales from the Cryptkeeper. She is a Film Independent and IFP lab fellow and an ABC and NBC diversity showcase director, best known for her horror fable Vampires in Venice and her action/drama The Pastor, released by Fathom Events and AMC. Her Icelandic noir Snaeland, which she co-wrote and produced, premiered at the Vail Film Festival and screens in the Brooklyn Film Festival 2020. Deborah is a Sundance Collab advisor and screenwriting professor at Brooklyn College, and a newly minted co-creator and writer of the noir-crime-thriller series Hot Freeze, with Canadian producer Nomadic Pictures (Hell on Wheels, Van Helsing, Fargo).

Deborah Goodwin

How Severance Perfectly Parallels the Absurd Speakership Debacle

Sam Jaeger is an actor, writer and director, best known for playing Mark Tuello in Hulu&#8217;s The Handmaid&#8217;s Tale and Joel Graham on NBC&#8217;s Parenthood. Among Sam&#8217;s numerous film and television credits as an actor are American Sniper, Inherent Vice, Lucky Number Slevin, Catch and Release, Eli Stone and Girl&#8217;s Club. He made his feature debut as writer-director in 2011 with the acclaimed indie romantic comedy Take Me Home, in which he starred opposite his wife, Amber Jaeger.

Sam Jaeger

How Story is Destroying Us (and How to Write Back)

Filmmakers

The 2022 Talkies: Talkhouse Film Contributors Share Their Top 10 Movies of the Year

The 2022 Talkies: Talkhouse Film Contributors’ Top Films of the Year

Andrew C. Fisher grew up on the gulf coast of Texas. He studied Philosophy in college, and he has spent most of his adult years trying to figure out how to tell a good story through moving pictures and sound. You can find Thanatos and other work at <a href="http://www.andrewcfisher.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">andrewcfisher.com</a>.
Right after Cacia Zoo popped out of her mom&#8217;s womb, she was dancing! She always knew she wanted to be a performer and artist. She visited New York when she turned 16 and took an acting class throughout the summer. After that summer her life was never the same. She went back to Taiwan and came back to New York the first chance she got. Her creativity is versatile and spread through many different mediums. Whether she&#8217;s in front of the camera or behind it, with herself or collaborating with others, she has immense passion for performance and art. If she&#8217;s not moving or creating, she&#8217;s on her way to.

Andrew C. Fisher and Cacia Zoo

Revisited: Can We Talk About BDSM?

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

Revisited: I Am a Coming-of-Age Drama

Julia Cho is a playwright and screenwriter. Her latest film, Pixar’s <a href="https://movies.disney.com/turning-red" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Turning Red</a>, is out now in theaters. Her plays include The Language Archive, The Piano Teacher, Durango, The Winchester House, BFE, The Architecture of Loss and 99 Histories and Cho has also cultivated a career as a writer and producer of a broad range of television shows from cult sci-fi (Fringe) to character-driven drama (Big Love, Halt and Catch Fire). She has won prizes including the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Barrie Stavis Award, the Claire Tow Award for Emerging Artists, and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award. Her play Durango was also named one of the Top 10 Plays of 2006 by Entertainment Weekly and one of the Best of 2007 by the The Los Angeles Times. She is an alumna of the Juilliard School and NYU’s Graduate Dramatic Writing Program.
 (Photo by Deborah Coleman / Pixar.)

Julia Cho

Revisited: On Sadness

Michael Tennant was born and raised in San Diego, California, and attended the University of Arizona (the Harvard of Arizona) where he graduated with a BFA in both Acting and Directing. After graduation, spent the next four years hustling as an actor in New York City, where he did his requisite episodes of Law and Order, wore a peacoat, and then decided he missed having a kitchen and returned to the West Coast. Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, he booked leads in multiple pilots as well as guest starring roles for ABC, NBC, Nickelodeon, and The CW before also working as an actor/producer/writer on productions for STX, IFC Films, Amazon, Neon, and Netflix. <a href="https://www.ifcfilms.com/films/pretty-problems" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pretty Problems</a>, which he wrote, starred in and produced, has won a number of awards, including the Audience Award at SXSW, and is out now in select theaters and on VOD through IFC Films. He currently resides with his dog Leroy in Los Angeles. They have a very nice kitchen.