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Talkhouse

Karina Manashil is the president of Mad Solar, having begun her career in the mailroom at William Morris Endeavor, where she became a talent agent. Manashil represented notable clients including Scott Mescudi, known by his stage name, Kid Cudi, and built her career taking talent into new arenas. In 2020, she partnered with Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to launch Mad Solar, which is backed by BRON Studios. The first production released under the banner was the Amazon documentary, A Man Named Scott, from director Robert Alexander. Manashil then went on to executive produce SXSW fan-favorite X, along with its prequel, Pearl, and the recently announced sequel, MaXXXine. All three films are directed by Ti West and distributed by A24. Manashil is an executive producer on the critically acclaimed Netflix animated series directed by Fletcher Moules, Entergalactic, which was released alongside its album of the same name from Kid Cudi on September 30th. Manashil is a native of Los Angeles and graduated from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production.

Karina Manashil

Film

Opa + Me

During the course of his notable career, Walter Hill has been a writer, director and producer on projects ranging from classic Westerns to action-packed thrillers and noir dramas, all marked with his unique visceral style. He most recently wrote and directed the Western Dead For a Dollar, starring Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Rachel Brosnahan and Benjamin Bratt, which is in theaters and on digital on September 30. Hill directed the smash hits 48 Hrs. and Another 48 Hrs. and is best-known for such acclaimed films as The Driver, The Warriors, Southern Comfort and The Long Riders. He also directed the pilot of HBO’s hit show Deadwood and the Emmy-winning miniseries Broken Trail. In addition to his work in the cinema and television, Hill has also written three graphic novels which have been published in France (Balles Perdues, Corps et Âme and Le Specimen), the second of which served as the basis for his 2016 film, The Assignment. (Photo by François Bouchon.)

Walter Hill

Three Great Things: Walter Hill

Maryam Qudus is a Bay Area-based producer and engineer who performs as Spacemoth. Her debut record, No Past, No Future, is out now.

Spacemoth

Music

Spacemoth is Finding Her Path in Indie Rock as a First Generation Afghan-American

Scott Friend is a New York-based filmmaker whose first feature, <a href="https://1091.tv/to-the-moon" target="_blank" rel="noopener">To the Moon</a>, is currently available VOD from 1091 Pictures, after playing at such festivals as Nightstream Film Festival, American Film Festival, Panic Film Fest and Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. He was awarded the Director’s Award from the Polish Film Institute at AFF’s 2020 U.S. in Progress program. As an actor, he recently appeared in the Gotham Award-winning film Fourteen, directed by Dan Sallitt, and The Dark End of the Street, directed by Kevin Tran.

Scott Friend

All in the Family: Brotherhood, Addiction and My First Feature

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

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

As a reserved kid growing up in Brooklyn, Carlos Hernandez would spend his subway rides bumping Al Green and Beethoven on his mp3 player, and weekends writing music on his mom’s piano. He once won a city-wide composers&#8217; scholarship for a classical piece he wrote as a teen. Raised by a funk &amp; soul DJ and a Santera-turned-midwife, Carlos was imbued with a lifelong respect for pop music and witchcraft, history, and sacred geometry.
Obsessed with sounds, adolescent Carlos started singing his private thoughts into a microphone, and called it Ava Luna. Over time this project transitioned into a critically acclaimed international touring group, a sandbox for collaborators Jennifer Vanilla and Felicia Douglass (Gemma, Dirty Projectors), and a cornerstone of Brooklyn’s DIY scene. In between tours, his mid-20s were spent at the beloved DIY sanctuary Silent Barn, where he made a living cutting hair and recording bands in an unrenovated auto shop. He has since cultivated a production career that includes credits from genre-expansive artists like Princess Nokia, Frankie Cosmos, Sneaks, Mr Twin Sister, Gustaf, Taphari, and Palehound.
With Ava Luna on hiatus, Carlos now returns to his songwriting roots as Carlos Truly. Largely produced by his brother Tony Seltzer, his debut Not Mine is out now on Bayonet Records.

Carlos Truly

Brothers Carlos Truly and Tony Seltzer Remember Their Musical Origin Stories

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

Ito Aghayere is currently playing young Guinan in Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, taking on the role originated by Whoopi Goldberg. Ito is Nigerian, Canadian American and a former White House intern. Ito was recently seen in the sitcom Carol’s Second Act, starring opposite Patricia Heaton and Kyle McLachlan. Her other TV credits include: Instinct, The Blacklist, Elementary, Doubt, Braindead, Orange is the New Black, The Knick, Unforgettable and Forever. Her film credits include Logan Lucky and Goldie. She made her Broadway debut in Ayad Akhtar&#8217;s Tony Award-nominated financial thriller Junk at Lincoln Center Theater. In 2016, Ito starred Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in Danai Gurira&#8217;s critically acclaimed play Familiar in a role in which she was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play. She was most recently seen on Broadway in Bernadette/Hamlet opposite Jane Lynch. Ito attended Duke University where she received her BA and then went on to Columbia University for her MFA. She currently resides in Los Angeles.

Ito Aghayere

The Case for Empathy

Barbara Crampton&#8216;s career as an iconic figure in the horror/thriller genres has spanned five decades and continues to gain momentum. Currently, she is starring in the horror films Alone with You and King Knight, and she recently starred in and produced the genre thriller Jakob&#8217;s Wife and produced a remake of the Stuart Gordon classic Castle Freak, based on the H.P. Lovecraft story. Other recent titles as an actress include We Are Still Here, Little Sister, Sun Choke and Adam Wingard’s You’re Next. Barbara guest-starred on the last season of Channel Zero: The Dream Door and starred in the Culture Shock episode of the highly acclaimed film series Into the Dark. Barbara can also be seen in the latest season of Creepshow from award-winning producer and SFX wiz Greg Nicotero. She made her screen debut in 1984’s Body Double, and Stuart Gordon’s 1985 cult classic Re-Animator, in which Barbara portrayed the leading role of Megan Halsey, continues to be a huge fan favorite. Other films Crampton starred in during her early career include From Beyond, and the original versions of Puppet Master and Castle Freak. Barbara lives in California with her husband, Robert.

Barbara Crampton

Three Great Things: Barbara Crampton

Award-winning actor Patrick Wilson, who has tackled lead roles in major Broadway musicals, as well as starring in big-budget blockbusters, currently stars in the new movie <a href="https://moonfall.movie/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Moonfall</a>, also starring Halle Berry and John Bradley, out February 4 through Lionsgate. He recently wrapped Aquaman 2, opposite Jason Momoa, and will star and make his directorial debut in the fifth film in the Insidious horror franchise. He previously starred in The Conjuring franchise and his other film credits include Aquaman, The Founder, Prometheus, Young Adult, Watchmen, Little Children. Hard Candy and The Phantom of the Opera. He starred in the TV series Fargo, opposite Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Ted Danson, and received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his performance in the HBO miniseries Angels in America, based on Tony Kushner’s play. Wilson earned two consecutive Tony Award nominations for Best Actor in a Musical, the most recent coming for his performance as Curly in the 2002 Broadway revival of Oklahoma!, starred in the revival of the Neil Simon comedy Barefoot in the Park, opposite Amanda Peet, and acted in the 2008/2009 revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons, with John Lithgow, Dianne West and Katie Holmes.

Patrick Wilson

Three Great Things: Patrick Wilson

Ann Shin’s latest documentary, <a href="https://www.artificialimmortality.ca/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A.rtificial I.mmortality</a>, which was selected to be the Opening Night film at Hot Docs 2021, is out now on VOD through Syndicado. Raised on a farm in British Columbia, Ann lives with her partner and two daughters in Toronto, where she writes fiction and produces films and TV series. Her documentary My Enemy, My Brother was shortlisted for a 2016 Academy Award and nominated for an Emmy. Her previous documentary, The Defector: Escape from North Korea, won seven awards, including Best Documentary and Best Documentary Director at the 2014 Canadian Screen Academy Awards, a SXSW Interactive Award, and a Canadian Digi Award. Her book The Family China (Brick Books, 2013) won the Anne Green Award and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Poetry Prize.

Ann Shin

On Filmmaking, A.I. and the Future of Memory

New York-based Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese-American director-producer whose debut feature, <a href="https://ascensiondocumentary.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ascension</a>, a striking observational portrait of the “New China” which is nominated for six Critics Choice Documentary Awards and the Gotham Award for Best Documentary, is now streaming on Paramount+. She was named one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine and selected for the 2020 DOC NYC “40 Under 40” list. Her shorts include the award-winning Commodity City (2017), It&#8217;s Coming! (2020), and Routine Island (2019), and her producer credits include Tania Cypriano’s Born to Be (2019), Ian Bell’s 808: How We Respond (2019), Nathan Truesdell’s The Water Slide (2018), and Johnny Ma’s Old Stone (2016). She is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. (Photo by Tomo Saito.)

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