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Talkhouse

Lauren Wolkstein is a NYC-based filmmaker originally from Baltimore, Maryland. Her award-winning short films include Social Butterfly (2013 Sundance Film Festival), Cigarette Candy (2010 SXSW Grand Jury Prize) and The Strange Ones co-directed with Christopher Radcliff (2011 Sundance Film Festival). Lauren and Christopher adapted The Strange Ones into their first feature film of the same name, starring James Freedson-Jackson and Alex Pettyfer; it world premiered to critical acclaim at the SXSW Film Festival in 2017 and will be released theatrically in January 2018. Lauren also recently completed Collective:Unconscious, a collaborative feature spearheaded by Dan Schoenbrun (with directors Josephine Decker, Lily Baldwin, Daniel Carbone, and Frances Bodomo), which was the first omnibus to premiere in the Narrative Feature Competition at SXSW in 2016. Lauren received her MFA in film directing from Columbia University and is an assistant professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University. (Photo by Shah Zaman Baloch)

Lauren Wolkstein

Film

A Letter to My 14-Year-Old Self

Daniel DiMauro, Dylan Bank and Morgan Pehme are the writers and co-directors of the 2017 Netflix Original documentary Get Me Roger Stone.

Daniel DiMauro, Dylan Bank and Morgan Pehme

Behind Enemy Lines: Documenting the Trump Campaign as an Independent Filmmaker

Jane Schoenbrun is a non-binary American filmmaker, writer and curator best known for writing and directing and editing the acclaimed features We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021) and I Saw the TV Glow (2024), both which world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Their third feature, Teenage Sex and Death and Camp Miasma, is forthcoming this year through A24. Jane is the co-creator of the touring variety series The Eyeslicer, the director of the feature documentary A Self-Induced Hallucination (2018), a producer of Aaron Schimberg’s Chained for Life (2019), an executive producer of season one of Terence Nance’s Random Acts of Flyness, and the creator of the omnibus “dream film” collective:unconscious (2016). (Photo by Spencer Pazer, courtesy A24.)

Jane Schoenbrun

Why I Stopped Watching TV But Made a TV Show

Jade Jenise Dixon is a filmmaker living in Los Angeles. She was born in Omaha, Nebraska, where she performed in local talent shows, plays and church events. She caught the directing bug in her teens and directed a rendition of the hit Broadway play For Colored Girls… before attending the University of Miami, where she was both a cheerleader for the football team and a passionate member of the UM acting conservatory, starring in and directing a production of The Scarlet Letter. After transferring to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she directed two further stage productions, Dixon moved to L.A. and made a splash with her appearance in the music video for “Separated” by Avant. In 2008, she wrote, produced, directed and starred in her first feature film, Truth Hall, which won several film festival awards and was in heavy rotation on the BET, Centric and Bounce TV Networks. She recently shot a pilot for a TV show of Truth Hall. Her second feature film as writer, producer, director and star, Dog Park, also won awards and is now available on DISH Network, Amazon and iTunes. Dixon is currently writing a deeply personal film about her life, currently entitled Peony Park.

Jade Jenise Dixon

Let the Healing Begin

Chad Hartigan was born in Nicosia, Cyprus, and attended the North Carolina School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking. In 2008, he wrote and directed his first feature, Luke and Brie are on a First Date, which premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival and was remade for Latin American audiences in 2013 as Luna en Leo. His second feature, This is Martin Bonner, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best of NEXT and went on to also win the John Cassavetes Award at the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards. His third feature, Morris From America, starring Markees Christmas, Craig Robinson and Carla Juri, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and a Special Jury Award for Robinson. It was released by A24, and received both Gotham and Independent Spirit Award nominations.

Chad Hartigan

My Brilliant Ideas on How to Fix the Oscars

Spirit Award-nominated writer/director Adam Bhala Lough has dedicated his career to telling compelling stories, collaborating with interesting people and creating authentic work. Moving between narrative and documentary, his films sit at the nexus of mainstream culture and the arthouse. He specializes in crafting real performances out of non-performers, artists, musicians, athletes and celebrities, while bringing Oscar-winning actors to the table as well. His films have played at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Edinburgh and Karlovy Vary, to name a few. His new film, Alt-Right: Age of Rage, opens in theaters on August 17. For updates, follow him on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/adambhalalough" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@adambhalalough</a> (Photo credit: Betty Bastidas)

Adam Bhala Lough

Does a Documentary Have to Take a Stance?

Bruce LaBruce is a filmmaker, writer, photographer and artist based in Toronto, Canada. Recently there have been retrospectives of his films at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto and at MoMA in New York City. His latest feature, The Misandrists, will be released in 2018.

Bruce LaBruce

Death and Marriage and Sex: On Ken Russell’s Women in Love

Rod Blackhurst is a Nashville-based filmmaker whose latest film, the horror movie <a href="https://dolly.movie/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dolly</a>, is out now in theaters through IFC and Shudder. His first fiction feature, Here Alone, won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Film at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and was released theatrically by Vertical Entertainment, and his thriller Blood for Dust, starring Scoot McNairy, Nora Zehetner, Ethan Suplee, Amber Rose Mason, Stephen Dorff, Josh Lucas and Kit Harington, came out theatrically in 2024. His first documentary feature, the Netflix Original Amanda Knox, premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

Rod Blackhurst

The Independent Film System is Broken (and Some Advice on How to Succeed Anyway)

Oren Jacoby, an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, has directed award-winning documentaries including: My Italian Secret (Netflix, iTunes); Constantine’s Sword with James Carroll; Lady ‘Ndrangheta (Sky) on women in the Mafia; Lafayette: The Lost Hero (PBS/Arté); The Shakespeare Sessions (PBS); Benny Goodman: Adventures in the Kingdom of Swing (American Masters PBS); The Beatles Revolution (ABC special); Master Thief, on the “art heist of the century” (ABC); and, with Brook/Lapping Productions, The Second Russian Revolution (BBC), winner of the DuPont / Columbia Gold Baton for Best Documentary, and called “the best BBC series of the decade” by the London Independent. His latest feature, Shadowman, is released theatrically on December 1.

Oren Jacoby

The Power of Invisibility, or How to Play the Long Game as a Documentary Filmmaker

Megan Griffiths is a writer and director working in film and television whose latest film, the coming-of-age drama <a href="https://www.monumentreleasing.com/year-of-the-fox" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Year of the Fox</a>, starring Sarah Jeffery, is now available on digital. She has directed episodes of the Duplass Brothers’ Room 104 for HBO, Animal Kingdom for TNT, Prodigal Son for Fox, as well as shows for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and EPIX. Her recent features include I&#8217;ll Show You Mine, starring Poorna Jagannathan and Casey Thomas Brown, and Sadie, starring Sophia Mitri Schloss, Melanie Lynskey, John Gallagher Jr, Danielle Brooks and Tony Hale, which premiered at SXSW 2018 and is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Her feature work also includes The Night Stalker (starring Lou Diamond Phillips as serial killer Richard Ramirez), Lucky Them (starring Toni Collette, Thomas Haden Church, Oliver Platt and Johnny Depp), Eden (starring Jamie Chung, Matt O’Leary and Beau Bridges) and The Off Hours (starring Amy Seimetz, Ross Partridge and Scoot McNairy). More on Megan can be found at <a href="http://www.thecinechick.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">thecinechick.com</a>. (Photo by Susan Doupe.)

Megan Griffiths

The Pervert/Genius Problem

Jessica M. Thompson is an Emmy-nominated Australian filmmaker who lives in New York City. <a href="https://www.thelightofthemoonfilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Light of the Moon</a>, her feature directorial debut starring Stephanie Beatriz, is currently in select theaters. Thompson studied acting at three major drama schools in Australia, before attending Film School in Sydney, where she met Carlo Velayo. They quickly formed a formidable filmmaking duo and have made several award-winning short films together, including, Hike, Percepio and Across the Pond. In 2011, Thompson founded Stedfast Productions, a collective of visual storytellers. As an editor, she has worked with twice Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Liz Garbus, and on the Sundance-winning film Watchers of the Sky. She also edited Cheryl Furjanic’s award-winning and Emmy-nominated documentary, Back on Board: Greg Louganis, which recently premiered on HBO. (Picture by Joana Totolici.)

Jessica M. Thompson

The Benefits of “Feminist Filmmaking”

Tommy Swerdlow is a self-expresser from the old school. He’s a poet-screenwriter-actor-director-teacher, whatever he can get his hands on. He wrote a movie called Cool Runnings that people seemed to like, and a few others as well, including Little Giants and Snow Dogs. Swerdlow was the uncredited first writer on the movie Shrek and came up with Donkey. He does not receive residuals; it is a source of great pain and trauma. Swerdlow also created the television series Brutally Normal with his old partner Michael Goldberg, which aired on the WB in 2000. You never saw it, but it was good. Swerdlow was a stalwart on the briefly thriving L.A. poetry scene of the early ‘90s. His poetry CD Prisoner of the Gifted Sleep was released on New Alliance records, and poems are featured on various compilation CDs and in a lot of magazines. He considers himself a poet first and foremost, which is pretty obnoxious but has some truth to it. His movie A Thousand Junkies, which co-wrote, directed and co-stars in will be released in January 2018.

film essay