Creative

Footer Legal

Main

NavBar

Sections

Topics

Become a subscriber today to get unlimited access

Thanks for reading!

Register to continue

Talkhouse

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

Film

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.

Cecilia Suárez

Three Great Things: Cecilia Suárez

James Lee Hernandez is a multi-Emmy® and PGA Award-nominated filmmaker and critically acclaimed podcaster who with his creative partner Brian Lazarte wrote, direct, and executive produced the Apple TV+ original documentary series The Big Conn, which is now available to stream. Hernandez and Lazarte recently directed, wrote, and edited the five-time Emmy® nominated HBO original documentary series McMillion$ (Sundance 2020), and their upcoming project, The Jet, another Apple TV+ original documentary series, is forthcoming later this year. Hernandez is a founding partner of FunMeter, a TV &amp; Film production company specializing in stranger-than-fiction scripted and non-scripted content. Hernandez is a self-taught filmmaker who began his career in the industry writing, editing, and directing content for Hulu, Hallmark, and other major, national brands.
Brian Lazarte is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and editor whose new four-part Apple TV+ original documentary series made with James Lee Hernandez, The Big Conn is now available to stream. His credits include a variety of award-winning documentaries and series, most notably McMillion$ for HBO, which he wrote, directed, executive produced, and edited alongside James Lee Hernandez. Additional notable credits include Katy Perry: Part of Me 3D, HBO&#8217;s Emmy award-winning Sonic Highways, Fed Up, ESPN&#8217;s Emmy award-winning “30 for 30” Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau, The Price of Free (Grand Jury Prize, Sundance 2018), and Showtime&#8217;s Time of Death, which won IDA&#8217;s Best Limited Series in 2014. A recipient of the Panavision New Filmmaker grant, he is a founding partner with Hernandez of FunMeter, a TV and film production company specializing in stranger-than-fiction scripted and non-scripted content. (Photo courtesy HBO.)

James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte

The Music of Collaboration

Gilda Sheppard is an award-winning non-fiction filmmaker whose new feature documentary, <a href="https://www.sinceibeendown.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Since I Been Down</a>, is now available on VOD. Sheppard is a 2017 Hedgebrook Fellow for documentary film and a 2019 recipient of an Artist Trust Fellowship. Her documentaries include stories of resilience of Liberian women and children refugees in Ghana; stories of three generations of Black families in an urban neighborhood; and a film ethnography of stories from folklore started by Zora Neale Hurston in Alabama&#8217;s AfricaTown. For over a decade, Sheppard has taught sociology classes in Washington State prisons and is a co-founder and faculty for FEPPS- Freedom Education for Puget Sound, an organization offering college credited courses at Washington Correctional Center for Women. Gilda is a member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College Tacoma Campus. (Photo by Elliot Solomon, courtesy Gilda Sheppard.)

Gilda Sheppard

Film: To Imagine What is Possible

Dan Coplan is an award-winning writer, director, producer and actor. He has been shot at twice, has traveled to Mt. Fuji in Japan on a Buddhist pilgrimage and, when he was 14, he was very, very sick – standing 5&#8217;11&#8221; tall, he weighed a mere 69lbs and was only given hours to live. This is why he makes movies. Coplan started making movies when he was 14 years old. One of his early films, The Incredibly Awful Dr. Sporgo, won the Silver Medal at the 1974 Atlanta International Film Festival and Golden Image Certificate at the 1975 Long Island International Film Festival. He graduated from the NYU Film School, where he was mentored by department head Haig Manoogian, who was also Martin Scorsese’s mentor. In 1975, he wrote and produced the documentary The Dream Factory, starring Sean Connery, Gloria Swanson, Marlo Thomas, Roy Schieder and narrated by Eli Wallach. It is now part of the permanent cinema collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Echos of Enlightenment, his critically acclaimed directing debut, has been shown around the world and was acquired by Netflix. He produced Growing Up Smith, which won the audience award at the 2015 Woodstock Film Festival, and the acclaimed documentary film The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille. His new film, 8 Winds, was released in March 2022. It won the award for Best Original Screenplay at the Madrid International Film Festival 2021. Look him up on IMDb.

Dan Coplan

How I Turned an Ancient Buddhist Parable into a Contemporary No-Budget Political Thriller

Born in the small town of King City, California, and raised up in the DIY Punk culture, Robert Machoian has been taking photographs his whole life and making films for well over a decade. His films have premiered at the Sundance, SXSW, LA, and Tribeca Film Festivals in the States and have screened at festivals around the world. His new film, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSNqjL1PP5I" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Notes From a Quiet Town</a>, made as a companion piece to the Killers’ latest album, Pressure Machine, is now streaming online. His debut solo feature as a director, The Killing of Two Lovers, premiered at Sundance and was released by Neon to huge acclaim in 2021. His work with his directing partner Robert Ojeda-Beck, including the features God Bless the Child, When She Runs and Forty Years From Yesterday, has won numerous awards and led to the pair being nominated for a Cinema Eye Honors Heterdox and Indie Spirit Filmmaker to Watch Awards. Robert has won awards for his cinematography and his photographs have appeared in magazines at Filmmaker Magazine, Indiewire, and Bright Ideas. His work comes from the intimate experiences of his life and the lives of those around him. In 2019, Robert had his fourth short film go to the Sundance Film Festival, which won the Jury Prize for Directing. (Photo by Ellie Hardiman.)

Robert Machoian

Like Songs Floating in the Air

Emmy® and GRAMMY® Award winner Tiffany Haddish has established herself as one of the most sought-after comedic actresses and performers worldwide. A prolific performer, she can currently be seen in Apple TV’s murder mystery series The Afterparty, opposite Dave Franco, Ben Schwartz and Ilana Glazer and the Nicolas Cage movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, opposite Pedro Pascal, Sharon Horgan and Ike Barinholtz. Other recent projects include starring opposite Oscar Isaac in Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter, hosting the talk show Friday Night Vibes and starring in Bad Trip, alongside Eric Andre and Lil Rel Howery. Haddish is perhaps best known for her breakout role in the comedy Girls Trip, where she played the scene-stealing Dina alongside Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, and Regina Hall. Haddish served as host and executive producer of the Emmy®-nominated stand-up comedy series Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready, and has had two comedy specials: her 2019 Emmy®-nominated and GRAMMY® -winning Tiffany Haddish: Black Mitzvah, and 2017’s Tiffany Haddish: She Ready! From the Hood to Hollywood. Haddish has written a best-selling memoir, The Last Black Unicorn (2018) – and was nominated for a Grammy for the audiobook version – a picture book, Layla, The Last Black Unicorn (the first of three children’s books) and collection of essays, I Curse You with Joy. Haddish’s journey and life experiences have inspired her comedy and sense of humor both on and off the stage. Haddish recently founded the She Ready Foundation to help and support foster kids in need. In 2021, the She Ready Foundation launched an Internship Program with Ready to Succeed for foster youth in the SoCal area. She currently lives in Los Angeles. (Photo via Lara Solanki / Netflix.)

Tiffany Haddish

Margie Haber is a widely known and influential acting coach who lives and teaches in Los Angeles. She’s worked with a who’s who of celebrity clients, including Brad Pitt, Halle Berry, Tiffany Haddish, Mariska Hargitay, Kyle Chandler, Josh Duhamel, among many others. She is the author of How to Get the Part, Without Falling Apart!, which is used throughout the world in drama schools and colleges and is considered the gold standard of acting books. Her new book, F*ck Your Comfort Zone: Take a Risk and Become the Lead in Your Own Life, is out May 31 through Regan Arts.