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Talkhouse

Critically acclaimed writer, director and editor Aaron Katz was born and raised in Portland, OR. His movies include <a href="http://www.sonyclassics.com/landho/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Land Ho!</a>, Cold Weather and Quiet City.

Aaron Katz

Film

Tracking My On-Again, Off-Again Love Affair with VHS

Chapman and Maclain Way are filmmakers from Los Angeles. They directed the Netflix documentary The Battered Bastards of Baseball, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and in 2016, they directed a short documentary segment for Amazon&#8217;s docuseries The New Yorker Presents. Their new documentary series, Wild Wild Country, is now streaming on Netflix. (Image by Tiffany Roohani, courtesy Sundance Institute.)

Chapman Way and Maclain Way

Interviewing the “Villain” of Wild Wild Country

Sarah Moshman is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and director-producer of the films <a href="http://www.empowermentproject.com/">The Empowerment Project</a> (available on Hulu), <a href="http://losingsightofshore.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Losing Sight of Shore</a> (currently on Netflix) and the upcoming <a href="https://www.neverthelessfilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nevertheless</a>, which she is now crowdfunding on <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1107652396/nevertheless-documentary-aims-to-end-sexual-harass" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kickstarter</a>. Sarah is dedicated to telling stories that uplift, inform and inspire as well as showcase strong female role models on screen. (Image by Brandon Kidd.)

Sarah Moshman

Why I Don’t Owe Anyone My Sexual Harassment Story

Susan Walter spent her youth working her way up the Hollywood ladder, taking the longest road possible to become a filmmaker, which she (finally!) did this spring. Her directorial debut, All I Wish, which she also wrote, made the Hollywood Blacklist of most-liked scripts, and stars Sharon Stone, Tony Goldwyn, Famke Janssen and Ellen Burstyn. The film will be in theaters from March 30 through Paladin Pictures. A Harvard graduate, before becoming a director she worked as an assistant director for eight years, wrote and directed a short film entitled Rubbernecks, produced and directed original content for the Internet long before anyone cared, worked as a development executive, and then as a screenwriter. She lives in Los Angeles.

Susan Walter

What Makes a Director

Leslie Zemeckis is an actress, author and award-winning documentarian. She is the co-author/creator of a one-woman cabaret show Staar wrote and produced the mockumentary film Staar: She&rsquo;d Rather be a Mistress, starring Carrie Fisher, Jeffrey Tambor and Fabio. She wrote, produced and directed the critically acclaimed documentary Behind the Burly Q, the true story of old-time burlesque, based on the bestselling book of the same name. Her second book, Goddess of Love Incarnate, the story of iconic burlesque stripper Lili St. Cyr and has garnered interests in film and Broadway for adaptation. Her second film is the award-winning Bound by Flesh, about vaudeville superstars Daisy and Violet Hilton. Her third documentary, Mabel, Mabel, Tiger Trainer, about Mabel Stark, the world&rsquo;s first female tiger trainer, is forthcoming through Cinema Libre Studio. Find more at <a href="http://lesliezemeckis.com/">lesliezemeckis.com</a>.

Leslie Zemeckis

The Ultimate Game of Trust

Kaouther Ben Hania constantly explores the boundaries between fiction and documentary; her sixth film,<a href="https://www.thevoiceofhindrajabfilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> The Voice of Hind Rajab</a>, is now in theaters. As a filmmaker, she constantly explores the boundaries between fiction and documentary. Her previous film, Four Daughters, was nominated for the Best Documentary Academy Awards 2024, after being presented in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The film received numerous prestigious awards and was sold in over 40 territories. Her 2021 film, The Man Who Sold His Skin, was also nominated at the Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film in 2021, representing Tunisia. All her other films have premiered at prestigious festivals including: Cannes, Venice, AFI, Los Angeles, Locarno, IDFA, Hot Docs Toronto. (Photo by Ammar Abd Rabbo.)

Kaouther Ben Hania

How I Made a Feature Film About Rape in Just Nine Shots

Lou Pepe directs both documentary and fiction films, among them Lost in La Mancha, shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary and winner of the Evening Standard’s Peter Sellers Award for Best Comedy; Brothers of the Head, winner of the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature; and The Bad Kids, which premiered at Sundance 2016 and won the Special Jury Award for Verité Filmmaking. Pepe holds an MFA in Film &amp; Media Arts from Temple University and is a fellow of the Sundance Documentary Film Program. He has collaborated with co-director Keith Fulton for over 20 years. Their most recent documentary, He Dreams of Giants, explores film director Terry Gilliam’s 27-year quest to film an adaptation of Don Quixote. They are currently in post-production on an experimental documentary about emotional responses to the ongoing pandemic. (Picture by Robert Beckwith.)

Lou Pepe

On Falling Asleep at the Movies

Sophie Brooks grew up in London and Los Angeles and went on to get her BFA in Film and TV Production from NYU&rsquo;s Tisch School of the Arts. Her first short film, Malcolm, won 2nd place at NYU&rsquo;s New Visions and Voices Festival. She followed this up with Maple Leaves, which premiered at The Palm Spring International Short Film Festival in 2014. Her latest film, The Boy Downstairs, is currently in select theatres and available on VOD.

Sophie Brooks

What One (Bad) Review of My Movie Taught Me About Myself

Nadia Alexander is a writer and actress, with a career spanning almost two decades. She is best known for her work in film and television, including Blame, for which she won Best Actress in a U.S. Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, and the Golden Globe-nominated series The Sinner. She is currently cowriting a miniseries set up at the studio MakeReady and can be seen in the Netflix series Seven Seconds. Upcoming films include The Dark (premiering at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival) and Boarding School (to be released later this year by Momentum Pictures). She is a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and an alumna of the Macaulay Honors College, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude with degrees in Physics and Psychology.

Nadia Alexander

You Hate Me, You Really Hate Me

Charlene deGuzman first garnered attention from tweeting her self-deprecating thoughts as @charstarlene and went on to write and star in videos on YouTube, and her most popular being the viral hit I Forgot My Phone. As a sex and love addict currently in recovery, Charlene&rsquo;s intention for the rest of her life is to bring awareness to sex and love addiction, and to help people feel got and less alone through all of her creative adventures.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/603048956/unlovable?ref=filmpress" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Unlovable</a>, which she wrote and stars in, will have its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival on March 10.

Charlene deGuzman

How Making a Movie Saved My Life

Ted Geoghegan is the writer and director of the acclaimed 2015 retro-horror feature We Are Still Here, which is currently available on Amazon Prime and Shudder, and the violent 1814-set action-drama Mohawk, now on Netflix. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and internet-famous cat.

Ted Geoghegan

Scared, Angry White Men

Jim Hemphill is the writer and director of the award-winning film <a href="https://www.facebook.com/troublewiththetruth/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.facebook.com/troublewiththetruth/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1567688259834000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEfdWVn5INQ2VaFYkDfqCAJ1hDMVw">The Trouble With the Truth</a>, which is currently streaming on <a href="https://amzn.to/2Q20O6F" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://amzn.to/2Q20O6F&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1567688259834000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE0fujkM407hiTH5e2ZBjQK8VSaCA">Amazon Prime</a> and other platforms. He has written about movies and television for Filmmaker magazine, American Cinematographer and Film Comment, and is the author of The Art and Craft of TV Directing: Conversations with Episodic Television Directors. He also serves as a film historian at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and has contributed audio commentaries to DVDs and Blu-rays for Indicator, Shout Factory, the BFI, and other home video labels. His website is <a href="http://www.jimhemphillfilms.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.jimhemphillfilms.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1567688259834000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHaS2u3V0GTADaZ-lbaGzXANhioeQ">www.jimhemphillfilms.com</a>.

film essay