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Talkhouse

Eric Heisserer is a screenwriter and director living in Los Angeles. Since 2010, he has written scripts for a string of successful studio horror films, including A Nightmare on Elm Street, Final Destination 5, The Thing and this year&#8217;s Lights Out. In 2013, he wrote and directed Hours, which was one of the last films Paul Walker completed before his death. A published author, Heisserer’s books include the recent 150 Screenwriting Challenges and he has written several short stories for the anthology site <a href="http://www.mulhollandbooks.com/popcornfiction/" target="_blank">Popcorn Fiction</a>. His latest film, Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, is released tomorrow by Paramount.

Eric Heisserer

Film

How I Wrote Arrival (and What I Learned Doing It)

Anna Biller&rsquo;s 35mm cult feature Viva and her 16mm art-film shorts have screened at major film festivals and art spaces around the world, and her work has been discussed in academic cinema journals. She is known for her use of classic and outdated film genres to talk about female roles within culture, coding feminist ideas within cinematic aesthetics and visual pleasure. She creates all of her own costumes and set designs, making many or the props and paintings as well as composing and scoring for her films. She has a BA in art from UCLA, and an MFA in art and film from CalArts. She continues to work on film because of her interest in emulating the look and feel of classic cinema, and her latest film, The Love Witch, was made using only traditional film processes.

Anna Biller

Bluebeard at the Movies

Brian Trenchard-Smith has been burning to make genre films ever since seeing Hitchcock’s Vertigo at age 13. So far he has directed 42 Crimes Against Cinema, and counting. (He’s an enthusiastic recidivist.) His cult favorites include The Man from Hong Kong, Turkey Shoot, BMX Bandits, Stunt Rock, The Siege of Firebase Gloria. His memoir, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/ADVENTURES-MOVIE-TRADE-MEDWIN-TRENCHARD-SMITH/dp/B08JVLC35P/ref=asc_df_B08JVLC35P/?tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=475866653660&amp;hvpos=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=15351232785781447577&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9004367&amp;hvtargid=pla-972105956148&amp;psc=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Adventures in the B Movie Trade</a>, is now available as an e-book.

Brian Trenchard-Smith

How I Swayed the 2004 Presidential Election with My Pro-Bush 9/11 Movie (Even Though I’m a Leftie)

Writer-director Nicholas McCarthy made his feature debut in 2012 with The Pact, adapted from his short film of the same name. The horror film, which premiered at Sundance, was released by IFC Midnight in the U.S. and spawned a sequel. In the wake of the success of The Pact, McCarthy wrote and directed the At the Devil’s Door, starring Naya Rivera and Catalina Sandino Moreno, which was released in 2014, also by IFC Midnight. In 2016, McCarthy wrote and directed the “Easter” segment of the anthology horror film Holidays. He lives in Los Angeles.

Nicholas McCarthy

One of Those Creatures: Remembering Michael Massee

Steven Sheil is a screenwriter and director. His first feature, Mum &amp; Dad, was released in 2008 and was described by Total Film as “one of the defining British horrors of its generation.” His second feature, the 2012 action-horror Dead Mine, was shot in Indonesia and starred an international cast. HBO Asia’s first original production, the film is distributed in the U.K. by eOne. He is also the co-writer of psychological drama Gozo, co-written and directed by Miranda Bowen for Bishop Films and due for release in 2016. He also works as a cinematographer, primarily with his wife, the artist and documentarian Jeanie Finlay, and is the co-director of the Mayhem Film Festival, based at Broadway Cinema in Nottingham, U.K.

Steven Sheil

Death, Grief and Why Horror Films Truly Matter

Musa Syeed is an independent filmmaker and writer. His new narrative feature, A Stray, premiered at SXSW 2016 and is now on release. His first narrative feature, Valley of Saints, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for World Cinema: Dramatic and the Alfred P. Sloan Film Prize. The Big House, a narrative short Syeed shot in Yemen, was a 2014 Sundance selection. His current features in development have been supported by the San Francisco Film Society, Tribeca Film Institute, and Torino Film Lab. (Photo by Nushmia Khan.)

Musa Syeed

Protesting HBO’s Mogadishu, Minnesota and Why Filmmakers Must Not Take Ownership of Others’ Stories

Clay Liford is an independent filmmaker living in Austin, TX. He has written and directed several shorts (such as My Mom Smokes Weed and Earthling) and the features Earthling and Wuss, and shot/edited over 20 other features, including St. Nick and Gayby. His latest feature, Slash, world premiered at SXSW 2016 and is currently on the festival circuit. You can follow him on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/clayLiford" target="_blank">here</a>.

Clay Liford

The Problem with Spoiler Culture

Sasha Gordon is an award-winning filmmaker and composer. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sasha immigrated to the US in 1989. Sasha has scored over 50 features and shorts (among them the Oscar-winning God of Love); directed several award-winning shorts (including Manhattan Melody, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and went on to play all over the world); and is thrilled to have just completed her debut feature, It Had To Be You, a subversive romantic comedy starring Cristin Milioti and Dan Soder, out now through Samuel Goldwyn Films. Sasha is currently scoring Amazon’s Gortimer Gibbon’s Life On Normal Street while writing her second feature.

Sasha Gordon

Damn You, Hollywood, For These Unrealistic Expectations

Hope Dickson Leach completed her MFA in filmmaking at Columbia University, where she made three short films that played at festivals worldwide. Screen International made her a Star of Tomorrow and Filmmaker magazine named her one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Her debut feature, <a href="https://www.montereymedia.com/thelevelling" target="_blank">The Levelling</a>, which premiered at TIFF and won Dickson Leach the inaugural IWC Filmmaker Bursary Award at the London Film Festival, is currently playing in Chicago goes on release in Los Angeles on March 31. Hope is currently developing several features and is a co-founder of <a href="http://www.raisingfilms.com/" target="_blank">Raising Films</a>, a campaign to make the film industry more parent-friendly. She lives in Scotland with her husband and two sons.

Hope Dickson Leach

Motherhood Made Me Invisible. Making My First Film Made Me See Myself Again.

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>.

Jim Hemphill

The Missing Masterpiece of the Found-Footage Horror Genre

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

Black-Masked Bands, Cannibals, Deranged Old Men and Other Highlights of Fantastic Fest

Alex Ross Perry was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1984. He attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and worked at Kim’s Video in Manhattan. He is the director of the films Impolex, The Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip, Queen of Earth, Golden Exits, Her Smell, Pavements and the new documentary Videoheaven.

film essay