Creative

Footer Legal

Main

NavBar

Sections

Topics

Become a subscriber today to get unlimited access

Thanks for reading!

Register to continue

Talkhouse

Phillip Youmans is a filmmaker from the 7th Ward of New Orleans. At 19, Phillip became the youngest and first African-American director to win the Founder’s Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival for his feature-length debut, <a href="https://www.phillipyoumans.com/burningcane">Burning Cane</a>, which he wrote, directed, shot and edited during his final years of high school. Phillip is also the youngest director to ever have a feature film compete at the Tribeca Film Festival. Distributed by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing, Burning Cane opened in select theaters on October 25th, 2019 and was released on Netflix on November 6, 2019. Phillip was nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director and a Film Independent Spirit Award for his work on the film. Recently, Phillip wrote, directed and edited a short film for Hulu’s Black History Month titled Imagine a Moon Colony, about a black family in 1970 Los Angeles that imagines the year 2020 through a black lens and creates abstract visuals based on their predictions.

Phillip Youmans

Film

Watch Them Rise

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

On Black Storytelling and Why Hollywood Must Irrevocably Change

Victoria Negri is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and actor. Her directorial debut, <a href="http://goldstar-film.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gold Star</a>, which she also wrote and stars in, world premiered at the Buffalo International Film Festival in October 2016, where it won the Audience Award, was released theatrically in fall 2017, and is currently available through Amazon Prime. Negri is currently in development on her second feature as writer-director, Ultra.

Victoria Negri

Short Film Premiere: This is No Time

Maria, Jennifer, Ursula, Gabrielle and Charity Burton run Five Sisters Productions, a boutique independent film and commercial production house committed to making high-quality films that highlight diverse and underrepresented voices, engage audiences, and contribute to a sense of hope on a personal or social level. Five Sisters Productions has made six feature films, including Manna From Heaven for MGM, documentaries, and numerous short films, PSAs, and commercials. Recent work by the sisters includes the critically-acclaimed documentary Kings, Queens, &amp; In-Betweens, about drag culture in Columbus, Ohio, and the drama A Sort of Homecoming, now on Netflix. Their latest production, the web series <a href="https://www.facebook.com/OldGuyComedySeries/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Old Guy</a>, debuts new episodes every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/fivesistersfilms/videos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a>. Learn more about their work at their <a href="http://www.fivesisters.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">official website</a>.

Maria, Jennifer, Ursula, Gabrielle and Charity Burton

Sibling Non-Rivalry

For Albuquerque, New Mexico new wave/synth-pop band Lindy Vision, family casts a shadow over everything. The trio — comprised of three Black Native sisters, Dorothy (Dee Dee), Natasha (Na), and Carla Cuylear — has spent the last six years honing their unique sonic palette, a mix of dark ‘80s new wave, bouncy synth-pop, and ethereal indie-rock that has drawn comparisons to Santigold, M.I.A., Devo, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and more. In that time, their music has landed them on bills supporting Spoon, Durand Jones and the Indications, A Tribe Called Red, Magic Giant, and more.
On their new EP, Adult Children Part II, Lindy Vision continues to create sweeping, synth-heavy soundscapes that provide a foundation for their introspective, emotionally raw musings on adult life after a tumultuous upbringing.
(Photo Credit: Cougar Vigil)

Lindy Vision

Music

Lindy Vision Are Healing Past the Trauma

The debut album from British singer/songwriter Eve Owen, Don’t Let the Ink Dry, is a work of raw sensitivity and uncontained imagination, brought to life over the course of three transformative years. During that time, the 20-year-old artist spent her summer holidays writing and recording in New York with The National’s Aaron Dessner, immersing herself in a creative exploration that provided welcome refuge from her sometimes-troubled school life. As she discovered an entirely new sense of freedom and belonging, Owen devised a sonic language all her own: frenetic yet delicate, mercurial yet nuanced enough to capture the most ephemeral of feelings.
(Photo Credit: Chris Almeida)

Eve Owen

How Do You Define Sisterhood?

Hilary Brougher is a screenwriter and director living and working in New York City. <a href="https://southmountainfilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">South Mountain</a>, her third original feature, premiered at SXSW on 2019 and is on VOD from May 5. Her first feature, Sticky Fingers of Time, was an official selection at the Venice, Rotterdam, SXSW, and Toronto International Film Festivals and was released theatrically in 1997. Her second feature, Stephanie Daley, starred Tilda Swinton, Amber Tamblyn, Melissa Leo, Tim Hutton and Denis O’Hare, and premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo Salt Award for Screenwriting. She is currently working on a documentary, Striper, co-directed with Maria Rosenblum. Brougher is the Chair of the Film Division at Columbia University’s School of the Arts as well as a full-time member of faculty in directing in the MFA program.

Hilary Brougher

Try This at Home

As former frontwoman of the critically acclaimed New York-based group San Fermin, KAYE (Charlene Kaye) has played network television and has toured with St. Vincent, Arctic Monkeys, alt-J, and others. She recently released &#8220;Closer Than This,&#8221; the first single from her upcoming album, which earned praise from Rolling Stone, NPR, FLOOD Magazine, and more.
<div class="yj6qo ajU"></div>

Charlene Kaye

Sister, Sister: Charlene and Liann Kaye Talk Growing Up Creative

Dubbed the “hero hip-hop needed,” veteran music journalist, hip-hop curator, Queens-native, filmmaker, and musician Sacha Jenkins has narrated hip-hop poetics for three decades. At age 20, he co-founded Beat Down, the first ever hip-hop newspaper, and went on to spend several years at Vibe magazine, where he served as both Staff Writer and Music Editor. His first feature-length documentary, Fresh Dressed (which tells the tale of hip-hop fashion), premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Jenkins would go on to direct Burn Motherfucker, Burn! (2017) and Word Is Bond (2018), both of which premiered on Showtime. Jenkins served as Executive Producer on the Netflix hip-hop series Rapture (2018), and his latest project Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men, a four-part doc series which he directed by Jenkins, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, and aired on Showtime in 2019. Jenkins is also a musician, whose latest band, The 1865, has been heralded by legendary guitarist and Living Colour founder Vernon Reid as “the only band that matters. Right now.&#8221;

Sacha Jenkins

Journey Back to My Father

Lynne Sachs is a Memphis-born, Brooklyn-based filmmaker. Her work explores the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together text, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Her latest film, <a href="https://www.lynnesachs.com/2025/10/22/every-contact-leaves-a-trace/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Every Contact Leaves a Trace</a>, will have its West Coast premiere on April 29 at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where she will receive the prestigious <a href="https://sffilm.org/event/pov-award-lynne-sachs-every-contact-leaves-a-trace/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Persistence of Vision Award</a>. Following this, Lynne will present Every Contact Leaves a Trace as part of <a href="https://www.prismaticground.com/year-six/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Prismatic Ground</a> at Anthology Film Archives on May 3. closing day of the festival). Sachs has made more than 50 films, both features and shorts (including Film About a Father Who, Tip of My Tongue, Your Day is My Night, Investigation of a Flame, and Which Way is East) which have screened at New York Film Festival, Sundance, Oberhausen, Viennale, BAMCinemaFest, Vancouver Film Festival, DocLisboa and many others nationally and internationally. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Arts. In 2019, Tender Buttons Press published Lynne’s first collection of poetry, Year by Year Poems. (Photo by La Nación.)

Lynne Sachs

In Celebration of the Darkness: What Can Happen When the Lights Are Out

With Mexican and Salvadoran roots in the San Gabriel Valley, East of Los Angeles, Angelica Garcia has spent the last few years creating a new, second family for herself within the welcoming community of Richmond, VA. The bond is christened with the announcement of Garcia’s signing to Spacebomb Records (Bedouine, Matthew E. White), and the release of her first two singles for the preeminent Richmond label: “It Don’t Hinder Me,” an anthem celebrating her roots that blends Wall of Sound pop and Southern rock, and “Karma The Knife,” a Reaggeaton-meets-dancehall earworm.
Like Lorde, Billie Eilish, and Rosalía, Angelica isn’t afraid to tear pages out of her diary and express emotions that might be difficult and oftentimes daunting to share. Garcia — who has recently toured with and supported acts like Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Natalie Prass, and Violent Femmes — sings about and pulls inspiration from her experience growing up in the predominantly immigrant Latinx communities of Southern California. The two new singles produced by Eddie Pendergast (a long time co-writer of Matthew E. White) showcase Garcia in her creative element, and herald the arrival of a bold and buoyant new voice in music.
(Photo Credit: Caitlyn Krone)

Angelica Garcia

Home Isn’t Just Where You’re From

Storyteller, podcast producer and host Sam Dingman is the co-creator of Bad With Money with Gaby Dunn and was a longtime producer on Karina Longworth&#8217;s You Must Remember This. Sam just released the third season of his own podcast, <a href="http://mailstat.us/tr/t/ko50g2ck2w5xijb/4l/https://familyghostspodcast.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Family Ghosts</a>, a documentary-style storytelling podcast. In each episode of Family Ghosts, Sam investigates the true story behind a mysterious figure whose legend has followed a family for generations, from grandmothers who were secret jewel thieves to mothers who assumed multiple identities. Sam is a Moth Grand Slam champion, and his stories have also appeared on RISK!, Too Beautiful to Live, Benjamen Walker&#8217;s Theory of Everything The Moth Radio Hour.

family