Creative

Footer Legal

Main

NavBar

Sections

Topics

Become a subscriber today to get unlimited access

Thanks for reading!

Register to continue

Talkhouse

Sheila Vand is an extremely creative and expressive performance artist and actor. She can currently be seen in Dave Franco’s directorial debut, The Rental, currently #1 at the box office. Earlier this summer, she co-starred in TNT&#8217;s Snowpiercer opposite Daveed Diggs and Jennifer Connolly. Last year, she starred in a thrilling off-off-Broadway show, Nylon, written by Sofia Alverez. Additional credits include the 2018 Sundance Film Festival NEXT Award winner We The Animals, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Wave, Aardvark, Argo, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Women Who Kill and XX. Vand made her Broadway debut opposite Robin Williams as Hadja in Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer Prize finalist Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo; she starred in the Disney Hall&#8217;s 10th Anniversary LA Philharmonic staging of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels for Esa Pekka Salonen, had her original performance piece Sneaky Nietzche mounted at LACMA and co-created the award-winning visual art series MILK: what will you make of me? with TED fellow Alexa Meade, which toured throughout Europe. This series served as the inspiration for Ariana Grande’s recent music video for “God Is A Woman,” on which Grande worked with Vand and Meade.

Sheila Vand

Film

Racist?

Atom Egoyan&#8216;s latest feature, <a href="https://sevenveilsmovie.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Seven Veils </a>starring Amanda Seyfried, is in theaters from March 11. His previous film, Guest of Honour, is currently available on Blu-ray on Kino Lorber and streaming through <a href="https://kinonow.com/film/guest-of-honour/5efcb02489961200015b4e80" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kino Now</a>, and the Criterion Channel has also released a collection called &#8220;Directed by Atom Egoyan&#8221; for streaming including masterpieces Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. With 19 feature films and related projects, Egoyan has won numerous awards, including five prizes at the Cannes Film Festival (the Grand Prix, International Critics Awards and Ecumenical Jury Prizes); two Academy Award® nominations; 25 Genie Awards (now Canadian Screen Awards), including three Best Film Awards. Egoyan was knighted by the French government and is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest honor. He’s a recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement. For more information on Atom Egoyan and his work in both film and opera, visit <a href="http://www.egofilmarts.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ego Film Arts</a>. (Photo by Ulysse del Drago.)

Atom Egoyan

Opera in the Age of Coronavirus

Joslyn Jensen is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter and actor. She was a guest writer and star of an episode in Linas Phillips&rsquo; web-series The Ride, produced by Mark and Jay Duplass (Sundance 2020). She performed original songs and was featured in an episode of CollegeHumor&rsquo;s Downbeat. For her acting work in Without (2012), she won Best Actress awards at the Marrakech International Film Festival and the Mar del Plata Film Festival, also receiving special jury prizes from the Florida Film Festival and Slamdance Film Festival. Other acting credits include: Funny Bunny (SXSW, 2015), Jackrabbit (Tribeca Film Festival, 2015) and Driftwood (Narrative Feature Winner, Slamdance Film Festival, 2016). (Image by Reto Sterchi.)

Joslyn Jensen

Not My Type: Uncut Jos

Rob Savage’s latest film, the Zoom horror film <a href="https://www.shudder.com/movies/watch/host/b89c77f392b1c5e8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Host</a>, is now streaming on Shudder. Rob wrote, directed, shot, co-produced and edited micro-budget feature film Strings at age 17, which premiered at the Rome Film Festival. and won Rob the Discovery Award at the British Independent Film Awards for the film, the youngest director ever to win a BIFA. Rob is a Sundance and Berlinale alumnus, has won a number of awards for his short films at festivals including the London Short Film Festival, Raindance and Sitges, and was the recipient of the BFI Future Film Award in 2011. Rob&#8217;s 2017 film, Dawn of the Deaf, played at over 100 film festivals worldwide, including Sundance and Sitges, where it won the Melies d&#8217;Argent for Best Short. He has directed episodes of Jez Butterworth’s Britannia and the pilot of AMC/Amazon’s Soulmates, and is developing a number of TV shows, including Rawblood, a horror series starring and produced by Natalie Dormer, and a small-screen adaptation of Dawn of the Deaf.

Rob Savage

How I Rediscovered Spontaneous Creativity Making My Quarantine Zoom Horror Movie

Tuppence Middleton is an English actress who currently stars as Alwyn in the inspiring real-life drama Fisherman’s Friends, opposite Daniel Mays, James Purefoy and David Hayman, which is now available on demand. She is well-known for her performances in such TV series as War and Peace, Dickensian, The Lady Vanishes and the Wachowskis’ Netflix show Sense8, and her film work includes roles in the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending, Danny Boyle’s Trance, and The Imitation Game and The Current War, both opposite Benedict Cumberbatch. Her upcoming projects include Shadowplay, the new thriller from The Bridge creator Måns Mårlind, and Mank, starring Gary Oldman and directed by David Fincher, about screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. (Photo by Rob Harper.)

Tuppence Middleton

The Way Forward: Tuppence Middleton on Painting During Lockdown and Her Plans to Write and Direct

Sergio Navarretta’s latest film, The Cuban, starring Lou Gossett Jr., Ana Golja and Shohreh Aghdashloo, is in select theaters from July 31. His passion project, it tells the story of a naïve pre-med student (Golja) who develops an unlikely friendship with an elderly Cuban musician with dementia (Gossett Jr.). Navarretta made his directorial debut with Looking for Angelina, a true crime feature that tells the story of one of the most sensational murder cases in North American history. Navarretta’s follow-up feature, The Colossal Failure of the Modern Relationship, is currently available on all VOD platforms everywhere. He is Vice President of S.N.A.P. Films Inc., and currently has a number of live action and animated projects in development. He divides his time between Toronto and Los Angeles.

Sergio Navarretta

Why I Make Movies

Greta Schiller launched her filmmaking career with Before Stonewall (1985), which won two Emmy Awards. In 2019, the film was re-released, ran in 65 cinemas, and was selected for the National Film Registry. Her other credits include the award-winning films Paris Was a Woman, International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Tiny &amp; Ruby: Hell Divin’ Women, Escape to Life, The Man Who Drove with Mandela, I Live at Ground Zero, No Dinosaurs in Heaven, The Marion Lake Story and Bones of Contention. Schiller holds a BFA in Film/Video and a Masters in Science Education from the City College of New York which awarded her the Townsend Harris Medal for Outstanding Contributions to her Field. Her newest film is The Land of Azaba (Kino Lorber 2020), which is premiering in the Vallodolid Film Festival this fall. She is founding director of <a href="http://www.jezebelproductions.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jezebel Productions</a>, a women’s production company since 1984.

Greta Schiller

Remembering Artie

Elegance Bratton began making films as a U.S. Marine after a decade spent homeless. Today, he holds a BS from Columbia University and MFA from NYU Tisch Graduate Film. Walk For Me, his award-winning debut narrative short about a young trans girl whose secret life is discovered by her mother at a gay ball, played in over 100 festivals worldwide. His documentary feature Pier Kids follows three queer and trans homeless youth on NYC’s iconic Christopher Street Pier to show the intricate ways queer people of color utilize public space to build chosen family. With Pier Kids, Elegance is the winner of Emerging Talent for Outfest 2019 and a Documentary Feature honorable mention at the New Orleans Film Festival (2019). He is the executive producer/creator of Viceland’s GLAAD- nominated and Cannes MIPCOM winning series My House. The Inspection, his forthcoming feature narrative script, is supported by Tribeca All Access and Film Independent Fast Track, and is being financed by Gamechanger Films. Buck, his most recent short, was a Sundance 2020 official selection. Elegance was one of Indiewire’s 25 LBGT faces to watch in 2019, and a 2018 grantee of winner of the Maynor Biggers Artist Fund. (Picture by Gioncarlo Valentine.)

Elegance Bratton

Seeing is Believing and We Need A New Way to See

Iranian-born artist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi&rsquo;s latest film, Radioactive, a biopic of Marie Curie starring Rosamund Pike and Sam Riley based on Lauren Redniss&rsquo; graphic novel Radioactive: Marie &amp; Pierre Curie: A Tale Of Love And Fallout, is out now on Amazon Prime. Satrapi, who lives in Paris, is the author of the hugely acclaimed, award-winning series of Persepolis graphic novels, which tell the story of Satrapi&rsquo;s youth in Iran in the 1970s and 80s, living through the Islamic Revolution and the war with Iraq. (Satrapi&rsquo;s other books include Embroideries and Chicken with Plums, and she is also the author of several children&rsquo;s books, including Monsters are Afraid of the Moon.) The 2007 animated film adaptation of Persepolis, which Satrapi wrote and directed with Vincent Paronnaud, garnered huge international acclaim, won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film and won two Cesar Awards for Best First Film and Best Adaptation. Her other films include Chicken with Plums (2011), based on her book by the same name, the crime comedy Gang of the Jotas (2013), and 2014 black comedy The Voices starring Ryan Reynolds, Gemma Arterton and Anna Kendrick. Satrapi lives in Paris, where her illustrations appear regularly in newspapers and magazines all around the world.

Marjane Satrapi

The Way Forward: In Post-Quarantine Paris, Marjane Satrapi is Getting Back to Creativity

Jim Gaffigan is a four-time Grammy nominated comedian, actor, writer, producer, two-time New York Times best-selling author, two-time Emmy-winning top touring performer, and multi-platinum-selling recording artist. His latest film, Most Wanted, in which he stars as Glen Picker, is now in theaters and on demand. Gaffigan’s many film credits include Three Kings, Super Troopers, Super Troopers 2, and Chappaquiddick, and his recent movies include Troop Zero, Them That Follow, Light From Light, Being Frank, Drunk Parents and American Dreamer. He released his seventh stand-up special, Quality Time, in 2019 through Amazon, which also the home for his latest special, Jim Gaffigan: The Pale Tourist. In addition to two seasons of the critically acclaimed semi-autobiographical The Jim Gaffigan Show, which he wrote and produced with his wife Jeannie, and his widely popular stand-up comedy specials, Gaffigan has guest starred on many television comedies and dramas, ranging from Portlandia and Bob’s Burgers to the HBO cult hits Flight of the Concords to dramatic roles in Law &amp; Order. Gaffigan and his wife currently live in Manhattan with their five loud and expensive children. (Picture by Robyn Von Swank.)

Jim Gaffigan

The Way We Get By: Jim Gaffigan is Getting Back to His Gardening Roots

Romola Garai’s debut feature film as writer-director, the horror film Amulet, starring Alec Secareanu, Carla Juri and Imelda Staunton, is released by Magnolia Pictures on July 24. Garai is a multi-award-nominated actor whose extensive film, TV and stage resume includes work with some of the world’s finest writers and directors, including Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette, Joe Wright’s Atonement, Francois Ozon’s Angel, Lone Scherfig’s One Day and Stephen Poliakoff’s Glorious 39. She also has an extensive list of TV credits including playing the lead in Marc Munden’s TV mini series The Crimson Petal and the White. On stage, she has played major roles in plays for the Royal Court (The Village Bike), the Young Vic (Measure for Measure), the Almeida (The Writer) and the RSC (Queen ANNE and Lear/The Seagull). As well as her extensive performing credits, Romola is also known for her writing/directing work, including Sundance Best Short Film-nominated Scrubber. She has a feature film in development with UK top production company The Bureau and a number of TV projects.

Romola Garai

My Monster

Aimee Lou Wood is a UK actress who came to international attention in her scene-stealing role of Aimee in Netflix’s Sex Education, starring opposite Gillian Anderson, Asa Butterfield and James Purefoy. The series, which was created by Laurie Nunn and inspired by John Hughes’ Brat Pack films, had 40 million viewers in the first month alone. Season 2 aired earlier this year to widespread critical acclaim. Aimee recently wrapped the biopic Louis Wain, directed by Will Sharpe, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the eponymous prolific English artist who rose to prominence at the end of the 19th century. Claire Foy stars as his wife, with Andrea Riseborough, Sharon Rooney, Stacey Martin and Hayley Squires starring alongside Aimee as the Wain sisters. Earlier this year, Aimee starred with Toby Jones in the stage production of Uncle Vanya at the Harold Pinter; the performance was met with critical acclaim. In 2019, she starred as Effie in the acclaimed Downstate at the National Theatre. Aimee graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2017. (Picture by Matt Holyoak.)