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Talkhouse

Bryan Reisberg is a filmmaker living in New York City. His first feature film, <a href="http://www.bigsignificantthings.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Big Significant Things</a>, premiered at SXSW in 2014 and was distributed by Oscilloscope Labs. Recently he produced Joel Potrykus’ <a href="http://thealchemistcookbook.oscilloscope.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Alchemist Cookbook</a>.

Bryan Reisberg

Film

How I Accidentally Went From Indie Filmmaker to Social Media “Dog Influencer”

Peter Vack is an actor and filmmaker from New York City. His award-winning short film Send premiered at SXSW and went on to play over a dozen other film festivals including AFI Fest. Vack was named a Sundance Institute Feature Film Fellow and an IFP Emerging Storyteller for his screenplay www.rachelormont.com. Assholes, his first feature, won the Adam Yauch Hörnblowér Award at SXSW 2017, and is <a href="https://www.cinemavillage.com/Now-Playing/assholes.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in theaters</a> through Factory 25 and Breaking Glass Pictures from October 6.

Peter Vack

Five Indie Directors Who Should Cast Peter Vack in Their Next Film And Why!

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?

Jake Mahaffy&#8216;s self-produced, micro-budget shorts and features were made single-handedly, featuring untrained actors in rural settings. His work has played multiple times at Sundance, Venice and SXSW. He founded two new filmmaking programs at two universities as an Associate Professor of Film and Art in the United States and currently coordinates the Screen Production program at Auckland University in New Zealand. His latest feature, Free in Deed (based on the actual events of a man who tried to perform a miracle), won the Orizzonti Best Film prize at the 2015 Venice Film Festival and was nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards in 2017. It is now playing theaters on limited release from Gravitas Ventures.

Jake Mahaffy

The True Cost of Making Free in Deed

Award-winning writer-director Maggie Greenwald’s films include The Kill-Off, The Ballad of Little Jo and Songcatcher. Her most recent film, Sophie and the Rising Sun, is now streaming on Netflix. TV work includes the films What Makes a Family, Get a Clue and Good Morning Killer, along with recent forays into episodic directing. She is currently developing the feature biopic Tokyo Rose – The Treason Trial of Iva Toguri. (Picture by Larry Ford.)

Maggie Greenwald

White Males, These Are Not Your Stories to Tell

Stand-up comedian Heather Turman attacks the stage with an unapologetic sense of self. Her impeccable timing and brutal honesty have landed her on the FOX series Laughs, and as a top-finalist in the 2015 Westside Showdown in Los Angeles. No stranger to touring the country, Heather&rsquo;s infectious stage presence has entertained audiences in 20 states and over 70 different cities. Earlier this year, she was featured at the prominent RIOT LA festival, and showcased for Just For Laughs 2017. Turman wrote and starred in the comedy feature film Stuck, alongside Joel McHale, Heather Matarazzo and Kate Flannery, due out later this year. For more, visit her <a href="http://heatherbrained.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">official website</a>.

Heather Turman

Why I Stopped Making Jokes About Actors

Jack Dunphy is a filmmaker, animator, actor and writer from Chicago whose short films Serenity and Chekhov have played at Sundance, AFI and festivals around the world. His latest short, Bob&#8217;s Funeral, won Best Nonfiction Short Film at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. His new podcast, Revelations with Jack Dunphy, premieres on October 15. His short film Revelations premiered at Slamdance and went on to play the Champs-Élysées Film Festival in Paris, France. His short film Brontosaurus played the True/False, Nashville, Florida, Philadelphia and Cucalorus film festivals. He starred in Assholes (directed by Peter Vack) which won the audience award at SXSW. He co-wrote Stinking Heaven, which premiered at the International Festival of Rotterdam, with Nathan Silver, and wrote, edited and produced Silver’s The Great Pretender, which played Tribeca, AFI and festivals around the world. (Photo by Shutterstock.)

Jack Dunphy

“Everybody Dies Frustrated and Sad and That is Beautiful,” or How Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali Helped Me Through a Shitty Time

Zach Clark is the writer-director of The Becomers, Little Sister, White Reindeer, Vacation! and Modern Love is Automatic. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Zach Clark

Trash Cinema, Hardcore (Art) Porn and the Big, Gross Mess We Live In

Director, producer and writer Terry Sanders is a two-time Oscar winner who has produced and/or directed more than 70 award-winning dramatic features, theatrical documentaries, television specials and portrait films of major American artists, writers and musicians. His latest film, <a href="http://www.9thCircuitCowboy.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span id="m_5709408443307871980m_-4260808657384927645m_17185021265065243m_-3956060566792784719m_-6883864623346689856m_-5817304636208031751m_2677551824111601205m_-28178790772395011m_2296423990611358341m_111985517381989941m_8981357065227285811gmail-docs-internal-guid-c6f9c466-7fff-3c34-287b-dc4ae8a2eb63">9th Circuit Cowboy, The Long Good Fight of Harry Pregerson</a>, is out now on VOD through Vimeo on Demand and Amazon. While at UCLA Film School, he produced and shot the Oscar-winning dramatic short film A Time Out of War, the first student film to win an Academy Award. After 10 years writing and directing narrative films with his brother Denis (including War Hunt, which introduced Robert Redford in his first movie role), Sanders joined forces with documentary film producer David Wolper and wrote, produced and directed five films including The Legend of Marilyn Monroe, narrated by John Huston. He subsequently made documentaries through the Terry Sanders Company, and in 1976 formed with his partner Freida Lee Mock the American Film Foundation, and over the next decades produced and/or directed dozens of award-winning films including Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, which won the feature documentary Oscar. Among many other awards, Sanders also won the Primetime Emmy for Lillian Gish: An Actor’s Life For Me.

Terry Sanders

What I Learned Working on The Night of the Hunter

Ana Asensio is an international actress, writer and director from Spain, living in New York. She has acted in Spanish TV drama series and independent films, produced and starred in award-winning plays, and adapted a Spanish best-selling novel into a one-woman show. Most Beautiful Island, her first feature film as a writer/director, won the Grand Jury Award at the 2017 SXSW Film Festival and will be released theatrically by Orion and Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Ana Asensio

Cowboys, Aliens, Dracula and Dubbing: Memories of a Small-Screen Childhood

Kogonada is a proud immigrant, born in Seoul and raised in the Midwest. He has been noted by Filmmaker magazine (25 New Faces of Independent Film) and the New Yorker for his visual work and film criticism commissioned by the Criterion Collection and Sight &amp; Sound. He currently resides in Nashville with his wife and two sons. His directorial feature debut, <a href="https://www.columbusthemovie.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Columbus</a>, starring John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson, is in theaters from August 4.

Kogonada

You, Me, and Hirokazu (flickering memories of a conversation in my head)

Writer-director Katherine Dieckmann’s latest film, Strange Weather, starring Holly Hunter, is available on digital and through Netflix. Her previous features are A Good Baby (2000), Diggers (2006), and Motherhood (2009). Dieckmann was the original director on Nickelodeon’s groundbreaking series The Adventures of Pete &amp; Pete, and has directed music videos for Sharon Van Etten, R.E.M., Wilco, Aimee Mann, Throwing Muses and Vic Chesnutt, among other bands. She is a Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of the Arts Film Program, where she teaches screenwriting.

film essay