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Talkhouse

Michael Lehmann has been a director and producer in film and television for over 30 years. After getting his start as receptionist for Francis Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios in San Francisco, Lehmann went on to direct nine feature films and over 90 episodes of television. His films include Heathers, Meet The Applegates, Airheads and The Truth About Cats and Dogs, and in television he’s directed, among others, episodes of The West Wing, Homicide, The Larry Sanders Show, Californication, Dexter, True Blood, American Horror Story, and, most recently Snowfall and Deception.

Michael Lehmann

Film

The Improbable Genesis (and Unlikely Return) of Meet the Applegates

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

The Politics of Female Orgasms in Hollywood

Damon Cardasis is a two-time Writer’s Guild Award nominee, and writer-director Rebecca Miller’s producing partner. Cardasis recently produced Miller&#8217;s film Maggie’s Plan, and is currently in post-production on a documentary with HBO. Round Films, Cardasis and Miller&#8217;s production company, is in development on a variety of projects, for film and television. His debut feature as writer-director, <a href="https://t.co/8jfCtV7YP3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Saturday Church</a>, is in select theaters through Samuel Goldwyn Films from January 12.

Damon Cardasis

Finding the Faith, or What I Learned Working with At-Risk LGBTQ Youth

Laurie Simmons is an internationally recognized artist. Her work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum, among others. In 2006, she wrote and directed a short film, The Music of Regret, starring Meryl Streep and the Alvin Ailey Dancers with cinematography by Ed Lachman. She will have a retrospective originating at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2018. Her first feature film, My Art, which premiered at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival and had its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017, is playing in select theaters through Film Movement from January 12. (Photo by Mary Simpson)

Laurie Simmons

The Heart of My Art

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

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]

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

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)

film essay