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Talkhouse

Natalia Leite is a writer-director-actor, born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her 2015 feature film debut, Bare, starred Dianna Agron, Paz De La Huerta and Chris Zylka and was released by IFC Films and Paramount Pictures. She often deals with sexuality in her work, which has been described as having “a bracing, assertive style” (Variety), “emotional intelligence and sensitivity” (Los Angeles Times), and as “cementing the reign over highly stylized and sexually progressive dramas” (Slant). Her second feature, M.F.A., a psychological thriller centered around rape crimes in a university, stars Francesca Eastwood and was released by Dark Sky Films this fall. She also directs music videos and commercials, and is a frequent contributor to Vice Media. She created the provocative Vice show Every Woman, which has garnered over 8 million views, and co-created and starred in the series Be Here Nowish on Vimeo. Her work has been featured in The Sunday Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Vogue, among other publications.

Natalia Leite

Film

Why Women Need to Tell Rape Stories

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

Uncovering My Real Self in My Debut Feature

Camille Thoman wrote and directed the 2017 thriller Never Here, starring Mireille Enos and Sam Shepard, a genre-blend between a classic Hitchcockian suspense mystery and a harrowing journey into disintegration of self. It is in theaters and on VOD from October 20 through Vertical Entertainment. Thoman&#8217;s award-winning documentary The Longest Game, which follows a group of zestful octogenarians who&#8217;ve daily for 25 years for a game of &#8220;paddle tennis,&#8221; will premiere on PBS in Spring 2018. In 2006, Thoman directed the short film Falling Objects, starring Mireille Enos, Timothy Hutton, Melissa Leo and Kevin Rahm. Her solo performance pieces have toured the U.K. and been performed by her in London at The Young Vic and the Battersea Arts Center.

Camille Thoman

The Time I Thought I Had Died and Was in Hell, and How I Came Back

Zia Anger is a filmmaker and music video director. Her debut feature, <a href="https://mubi.com/en/us/films/my-first-film" target="_blank" rel="noopener">My First Film</a>, is streaming globally on MUBI from September 6. In 2018 she began touring a new solo performance that traces the last ten years of her lost and abandoned work, titled My First Film. The performance was named by The New Yorker as one of the “Sixty-two Films That Shaped the Art of Documentary Filmmaking.” Her most recent short, My Last Film, premiered at the 53rd New York Film Festival. She has made music videos for various independent artists, including Angel Olsen, Mitski, Julianna Barwick, Maggie Rogers, and Jenny Hval; the latter of whom she also tours with as a performer. In 2016, Zia participated in the Sundance Institute&#8217;s Screenwriter&#8217;s Intensive, and in 2015 she was included in Filmmaker magazine&#8217;s &#8220;25 New Faces of Independent Film.&#8221; Find out more at her <a href="http://www.ziaanger.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">official site</a>. (Picture by Theo Anthony.)

Zia Anger

[to tell other people’s stories]

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

Alexandre O. Philippe is the writer-director of <a href="https://screenmediafilms.net/productions/details/2891/Memory-The-Origins-of-Alien" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Memory: The Origins of Alien</a>, an Exhibit A Pictures film produced by Kerry Deignan Roy, which is released by Screen Media on October 4. He holds a master&#8217;s degree in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is creative director of Denver-based Cinema Vertige and Exhibit A Pictures. He has written, directed, and produced numerous award-winning films and documentaries, including 78/52 (a documentary about the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho),The People vs. George Lucas, The Life and Times of Paul the Psychic Octopus, and Doc of the Dead. Philippe is also co-owner and co-creator of Fried Comics.

Alexandre O. Philippe

The Primal Moment

Miguel Arteta is a Puerto Rican filmmaker currently living in Los Angeles. His latest film, Beatriz at Dinner, written by regular collaborator Mike White and starring Salma Hayek, John Lithgow, Connie Britton and Jay Duplass, was released by Roadside Attractions earlier this summer . He won an Independent Spirit Award for his first feature, Chuck &amp; Buck (2000), written by Mike White. It premiered and found distribution at the Sundance Film Festival, as did Star Maps (1997) and The Good Girl (2002). Has also directed Youth in Revolt (2009), with Michael Cera; Cedar Rapids (2011), with Ed Helms and John C. Reilly; and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (2014), with Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner. Arteta’s TV work includes Freaks and Geeks, The Office, Six Feet Under, Enlightened, New Girl, Nurse Jackie, The Big C, American Horror Story and Getting On. He studied film with Jeanine Basinger at the Wesleyan Film Program and has taught at the Sundance Institute’s Directors Labs and at the Middle Eastern Film Lab in Jordan. (Picture by Lacey Terrell.)

Miguel Arteta

Puerto Rico After Maria

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

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

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.

film essay