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Talkhouse

Barbara Kopple produced and directed Harlan County USA and American Dream, both winners of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Her other films include Fallen Champ: The Untold Story Of Mike Tyson, Wild Man Blues, Shut Up &amp; Sing, Gun Fight, Running From Crazy, Hot Type: 150 Years Of The Nation, Miss Sharon Jones! and This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous. Her latest film, <a href="http://www.docnyc.net/film/a-murder-in-mansfield/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A Murder in Mansfield</a>, has its world premiere at DOC NYC on November 12. Learn more about her <a href="http://www.cabincreekfilms.com/barbara_kopple.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Barbara Kopple

Film

Why a Psychology Background Comes in Handy as a Documentary Filmmaker

Erik Nelson is the director of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmwm4VPW7RY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Cold Blue</a>, which airs on HBO on June 6, and the 2017 documentary A Gray State. He is the producer of Werner Herzog&#8217;s award-winning documentaries Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World, Into the Abyss and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. His previous work as a director includes the Harlan Ellison documentary, Dreams with Sharp Teeth, which premiered at SXSW in 2008. (Photo by Galen Fletcher, courtesy Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.)

Erik Nelson

Collaborating with Ghosts (and Werner Herzog)

Kelly Loudenberg is a filmmaker and artist who has been exploring the American justice system for more than a decade, most recently through The Confession Tapes, the Netflix series she created and directed. This project has grown out of her work profiling individuals, systems and the grey areas of culpability and coercion. Kelly has contributed to the Atlantic, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and National Geographic. Her work has been shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Monte Vista Projects, SXSW Film Festival, and the Guggenheim Labs. She has also been artist-in-residence at the Nevada Museum of Art, the Center for Land Use Interpretation and Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido, Mexico. More at <a href="http://www.kellyloudenberg.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.kellyloudenberg.com</a>.

Kelly Loudenberg

Negative Spaces: What I Left Out of The Confession Tapes, and Why

Maxim Pozdorovkin is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and media curator based in New York City. He is the director of three feature-length documentaries and numerous short films. His films include Pussy Riot: a Punk Prayer, The Notorious Mr. Bout and Capital. Maxim holds a PhD from Harvard University and was a junior fellow at Harvard&#8217;s Society of Fellows. His latest film, <a href="https://ournewpresident.us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Our New President</a>, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and is now available on iTunes.

Maxim Pozdorovkin

What I Learned Making a Film about a Clinic for Undocumented Immigrants

Lana Wilson is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker based in New York. Her first film, After Tiller, premiered at Sundance in 2013, and went on to win an Emmy for Best Documentary. Oscilloscope Laboratories gave the film a 50-city theatrical release, and it was nationally broadcast on PBS&rsquo;s POV. Her second feature, <a href="http://www.thedeparturefilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Departure</a>, opens in New York at Metrograph on October 13, and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica on October 20. It will expand to additional select cities shortly after that.

Lana Wilson

Cell Phones and Fireworks, or the Ineffable Magic of Building Trust with a Documentary Subject

Sabaah Folayan, the writer-director-producer of Whose Streets?, is an activist and storyteller born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. As an advocate at Rikers Island, Folayan interviewed incarcerated people about their experiences with trauma. She later helped organize The Millions March, one of the largest marches for racial justice in New York history, in response to the non-indictment of the police officer who choked Eric Garner to death. Folayan entered the world of storytelling through theater, attending the Lee Strasberg Institute of Theatre and Film as a teenager, and performing as a member of the Black Theater Ensemble while a pre-med student at Columbia University. In September 2014, she went to Ferguson with cinematographer Lucas Alvarado-Farrar to learn the truth behind the dramatic scenes playing out on the news. Hearing the stories from the community inspired her to embark on her directorial debut Whose Streets?, landing her a coveted spot on Filmmaker magazine’s annual “25 New Faces of Independent Film” along with co-director Damon Davis. The film world premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews and was released this summer by Magnolia Pictures.

Sabaah Folayan

Movement to Market: On the Making and Selling of Whose Streets?

Born in 1981 in Copenhagen, Elvira Lind graduated from City Varsity School of Media and Creative Arts in Cape Town in 2006, majoring in documentary film. She has worked within that field since directing and shooting documentaries of various lengths for TV, cinema, and web on 4 different continents. Elvira now lives and works out of New York, where she also writes on various fiction projects. Elvira&#8217;s first feature documentary, Songs for Alexis, competed at IDFA in 2014 and screened at a long list of international festivals; she received CPH:DOX new talent award in 2015; and her first international documentary TV series, Twiz and Tuck, launched on Viceland this year. Elvira&#8217;s second feature documentary, <a href="http://www.bobbijene.oscilloscope.net">Bobbi Jene</a>, premiered at Tribeca 2017 and is being released theatrically by Oscilloscope from September 22.

Elvira Lind

On Compulsive Home-Movie-Making During Loss, Birth and Hamlet

Michael Almereyda’s films encompass fiction and documentary, features and shorts. Titles include Nadja (1994), Hamlet (2000), William Eggleston in the Real World (2005) and Experimenter (2015). Almereyda’s latest documentary, Escapes, is currently in theaters, released by Grasshopper Film. Marjorie Prime, awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at Sundance in January, will open in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Fe on August 18th, distributed by FilmRise.

Michael Almereyda

Confessions of a Latecomer: Michael Almereyda on Letters from Baghdad

Josh Tickell is a Sundance award-winning film director and bestselling author. Josh co-directed the 2017 release, Good Fortune, the rags to riches biopic of Paul Mitchell and Patron cofounder, John Paul DeJoria, which is out June 23 in theaters and available on iTunes from August. Tickell’s forthcoming book, Kiss the Ground – How The Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body and Save the World, hits stores in December 2017; the companion movie, Kiss the Ground, will be released in 2018. Tickell’s movies have been shown in the White House, selected as a New York Times Critics’ Pick and shortlisted for an Oscar. He has spoken at more than 100 different colleges globally. He has been a guest on such shows as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Good Morning America, Morning Joe and The Today Show.
Rebecca Harrell Tickell’s documentaries include Pump, narrated by Jason Bateman, The Big Fix (an Official Selection of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival), and Fuel, the 2008 Sundance Award-winning documentary about America’s addiction to oil. At 9 years of age, Harrell Tickell was called &#8220;a plucky schemer always working an angle&#8221; by Roger Ebert, commenting on her starring role in Prancer, the 1989 MGM Christmas classic with Sam Elliott. As a filmmaker, musician, activist, public speaker and author, she is committed to telling stories that change the lives of people who are affected by environmental issues. Harrell Tickell penned the book Hot, Rich and Green!, about redefining feminism and the role of women in the environmental movement. Harrell Tickell is the co-owner of and powerhouse behind the Big Picture Ranch.

Joshua Tickell and Rebecca Harrell Tickell

How We Swapped Hollywood for a Remote Farm — and Found Happiness

Charlie Shackleton is a London-based filmmaker and film critic. His new film, Zodiac Killer Project, premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the NEXT Innovator Award, and is <a href="https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/zodiac-killer-project" target="_blank" rel="noopener">out now</a> on digital. His other recent projects include This Land, a radio documentary produced with Eleanor McDowall for Radio 4, and the short films Camera Test (King Cadbury) and Lateral. His previous work as a filmmaker includes the features <a href="http://charlielyne.com/beyondclueless">Beyond Clueless</a> (2014) and <a href="http://charlielyne.com/fearitself">Fear Itself</a> (2015), the shorts <a href="http://charlielyne.com/copycat">Copycat</a> (2015), <a href="http://charlielyne.com/blackout">Blackout</a> (2016) and <a href="http://charlielyne.com/fishstory">Fish Story</a> (2017), and the 10-hour protest film <a href="http://charlielyne.com/paintdrying">Paint Drying</a> (2016). Visit his <a href="https://charlie.film/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">personal website</a> for more info. (Photograph by <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charlie_Shackleton.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mia Mullarkey</a>.)

Charlie Shackleton

Why Nirvanna the Band the Show is the Most Criminally Overlooked Show on TV

Andrew Cohn is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and screenwriter living between Los Angeles and New York. His most recent film, <a href="http://nightschool.oscilloscope.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Night School</a>, premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and is in being released theatrically by Oscilloscope Laboratories from June 9. He is the director of the documentary Kid Danny for ESPN Films’ “30 for 30” series and his first film, Medora, went on to win an Emmy for PBS’ “Independent Lens” series. His new film, Danny Brown: Live at the Majestic, will be released through Apple Music later this year.

Andrew Cohn

That Time I Was Robbed at Gunpoint While Shooting My Documentary

Donal Mosher is a filmmaker, photographer, writer, and musician. He is the collaborative director with Michael Palmieri of the award-winning documentary features 
<a href="https://www.kinolorber.com/film/thegospelofeureka" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Gospel of Eureka</a> (out February 8), October Country, Off Label and the shorts Rougarouing, Marseilles and most recently Peace in the Valley for Field of Vision. Alongside filmmaking he has published fiction, non-fiction, and reviews including a contribution to the LAMBDA Award-winning anthology Portland Queer. His recent photographic work, The Vibrancy is Killing Me, was on exhibition in Munich, Germany in 2015. Selections of his film, writing, and photographic work can be found at <a href="http://donalmosher.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">donalmosher.org</a>.

documentary