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Talkhouse

Sergio Navarretta’s latest film, The Cuban, starring Lou Gossett Jr., Ana Golja and Shohreh Aghdashloo, is in select theaters from July 31. His passion project, it tells the story of a naïve pre-med student (Golja) who develops an unlikely friendship with an elderly Cuban musician with dementia (Gossett Jr.). Navarretta made his directorial debut with Looking for Angelina, a true crime feature that tells the story of one of the most sensational murder cases in North American history. Navarretta’s follow-up feature, The Colossal Failure of the Modern Relationship, is currently available on all VOD platforms everywhere. He is Vice President of S.N.A.P. Films Inc., and currently has a number of live action and animated projects in development. He divides his time between Toronto and Los Angeles.

Sergio Navarretta

Film

Why I Make Movies

Greta Schiller launched her filmmaking career with Before Stonewall (1985), which won two Emmy Awards. In 2019, the film was re-released, ran in 65 cinemas, and was selected for the National Film Registry. Her other credits include the award-winning films Paris Was a Woman, International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Tiny &amp; Ruby: Hell Divin’ Women, Escape to Life, The Man Who Drove with Mandela, I Live at Ground Zero, No Dinosaurs in Heaven, The Marion Lake Story and Bones of Contention. Schiller holds a BFA in Film/Video and a Masters in Science Education from the City College of New York which awarded her the Townsend Harris Medal for Outstanding Contributions to her Field. Her newest film is The Land of Azaba (Kino Lorber 2020), which is premiering in the Vallodolid Film Festival this fall. She is founding director of <a href="http://www.jezebelproductions.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jezebel Productions</a>, a women’s production company since 1984.

Greta Schiller

Remembering Artie

Elegance Bratton began making films as a U.S. Marine after a decade spent homeless. Today, he holds a BS from Columbia University and MFA from NYU Tisch Graduate Film. Walk For Me, his award-winning debut narrative short about a young trans girl whose secret life is discovered by her mother at a gay ball, played in over 100 festivals worldwide. His documentary feature Pier Kids follows three queer and trans homeless youth on NYC’s iconic Christopher Street Pier to show the intricate ways queer people of color utilize public space to build chosen family. With Pier Kids, Elegance is the winner of Emerging Talent for Outfest 2019 and a Documentary Feature honorable mention at the New Orleans Film Festival (2019). He is the executive producer/creator of Viceland’s GLAAD- nominated and Cannes MIPCOM winning series My House. The Inspection, his forthcoming feature narrative script, is supported by Tribeca All Access and Film Independent Fast Track, and is being financed by Gamechanger Films. Buck, his most recent short, was a Sundance 2020 official selection. Elegance was one of Indiewire’s 25 LBGT faces to watch in 2019, and a 2018 grantee of winner of the Maynor Biggers Artist Fund. (Picture by Gioncarlo Valentine.)

Elegance Bratton

Seeing is Believing and We Need A New Way to See

Romola Garai’s debut feature film as writer-director, the horror film Amulet, starring Alec Secareanu, Carla Juri and Imelda Staunton, is released by Magnolia Pictures on July 24. Garai is a multi-award-nominated actor whose extensive film, TV and stage resume includes work with some of the world’s finest writers and directors, including Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette, Joe Wright’s Atonement, Francois Ozon’s Angel, Lone Scherfig’s One Day and Stephen Poliakoff’s Glorious 39. She also has an extensive list of TV credits including playing the lead in Marc Munden’s TV mini series The Crimson Petal and the White. On stage, she has played major roles in plays for the Royal Court (The Village Bike), the Young Vic (Measure for Measure), the Almeida (The Writer) and the RSC (Queen ANNE and Lear/The Seagull). As well as her extensive performing credits, Romola is also known for her writing/directing work, including Sundance Best Short Film-nominated Scrubber. She has a feature film in development with UK top production company The Bureau and a number of TV projects.

Romola Garai

My Monster

Peter Medak is an award-winning international film director whose latest film, <a href="http://www.theghostofpetersellers.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Ghost of Peter Sellers</a>, is now available to watch on demand. Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1937, Peter fled to England age 18 during the uprising against the communist regime and immediately began his film career with Associated British Picture Corporation, working on some of the most remarkable British films of that period. In 1963, Peter was signed by Universal Studios in Hollywood and began directing television. 1967 saw him sign with Paramount to direct his first feature, Negatives, with Glenda Jackson. His next two films were highly acclaimed black comedies, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, starring Alan Bates, and The Ruling Class, with Peter O’ Toole, which received an Academy Award nomination. Over the next 30 years, Peter earned the reputation of an actors’ director, resulting in such acclaimed films as The Changeling’with George C. Scott, The Krays (Evening Standard Award for Best Director) and Romeo is Bleeding, with Gary Oldman. In a career spanning 50 years, Peter has made 27 features and 59 TV episodes. He continues to live and breathe film every waking moment.

Peter Medak

Why 45 Years On, I Still Dream of Making Evening Flight

Aimiende Negbenebor Sela is a writer-director of Nigerian descent, adopted by a Jewish-Israeli family from the Bronx. Her award-winning short films have screened at numerous festivals across the world, and her screenplays have placed in several contests including Austin Film Festival, Cinestory Fellowship, Nicolls Academy, Screencraft, and the Sundance Writer’s Lab. Growing up as that kid glued to The Sound of Music, back in Nigeria, to the adult now dazzled by the complexity of the characters in 12 Angry Men, films have always helped Aimiende make sense of the world. As a result, her work interrogates the human condition but with empathy as she truly believes we all live the same lives, we’re just colored differently. Her production company, <a href="https://www.selafilms.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sela Films</a>, was born out of this belief in order to help push the boundaries of innovation, inclusion, diversity and creativity with a focus on humanism. Hermit, her latest short film, is currently making its rounds on the festival circuit. Aimiende currently resides in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and their 14-year-old Shih Tzu, Orlando.

Aimiende Negbenebor Sela

Stick Figures: On the Basis of Race

Onur Tukel is a writer, director and illustrator. Some of his films include Catfight, The Misogynists, Scenes From An Empty Church and Summer of Blood. He co-wrote the children&#8217;s books Let&#8217;s Make a Movie! and The Legend of Halloween with David Gordon Green, and his latest book, the illustrated novel <a href="https://www.pitchstonebooks.com/catalog/run-werewolf-run" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Run Werewolf Run</a>, is out now.

Onur Tukel

The Disappearing Act

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

Confessions of a Middle-Aged Fanboy

Phillip Youmans is a filmmaker from the 7th Ward of New Orleans. At 19, Phillip became the youngest and first African-American director to win the Founder’s Award for Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival for his feature-length debut, <a href="https://www.phillipyoumans.com/burningcane">Burning Cane</a>, which he wrote, directed, shot and edited during his final years of high school. Phillip is also the youngest director to ever have a feature film compete at the Tribeca Film Festival. Distributed by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing, Burning Cane opened in select theaters on October 25th, 2019 and was released on Netflix on November 6, 2019. Phillip was nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director and a Film Independent Spirit Award for his work on the film. Recently, Phillip wrote, directed and edited a short film for Hulu’s Black History Month titled Imagine a Moon Colony, about a black family in 1970 Los Angeles that imagines the year 2020 through a black lens and creates abstract visuals based on their predictions.

Phillip Youmans

Watch Them Rise

Jonathan Milott’s latest feature, the thriller <a href="https://www.quiverdistribution.com/becky" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Becky</a> – which he co-directed with Cary Murnion and which stars Lulu Wilson, Joel McHale and Kevin James – is out now on digital and screening at drive-ins around the country. Milott and Murnion met at Parsons School of Design, where they teamed up to run a cutting edge animation, design and advertising firm and began to explore filmmaking together. Their early collaborations pushed the boundaries of taste, technique, form, and humor. One of their first short films premiered at SXSW, which parlayed into feature filmmaking. Their directorial feature film debut, Cooties, starring Elijah Wood and Rainn Wilson, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival; distributed by Lions Gate, it is now available on VOD. Bushwick, their second feature film, starring Dave Bautista and Brittany Snow, premiered in the U.S. at Sundance and had its international premiere at Cannes’ Director&#8217;s Fortnight. It is now available on Netflix.

Jonathan Milott

Finding the Details and Choosing Your Battles

Named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine, Morgan Jon Fox is a writer-director from Memphis, currently living in Chicago, whose work has focused primarily on youth and self-discovery in the South. His short film The One You Never Forget is now streaming on Vimeo <a href="https://vimeo.com/288610484" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>. (Picture by Breezy Lucia.)

Morgan Jon Fox

The Power of Being Seen

Shola Amoo’s debut feature was a multimedia film called A Moving Image, which received the Special Recognition Award at the Blackstar Film Festival in Philadelphia, had its European Premiere at the BFI London Film Festival 2016 and was released theatrically in the U.K. in 2017 through Verve Pictures. Shola’s second feature was the drama <a href="https://t.co/tueFDP6Xna?amp=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Last Tree</a>, which premiered at Sundance 2019 in the World Cinema Dramatic competition. The film was released theatrically in the U.K. through Picturehouse Entertainment and opens <a href="https://www.bam.org/film/2020/lfb-the-last-tree" target="_blank" rel="noopener">virtually via BAM</a> from June 25. The Last Tree received the Best Screenplay Award from the Writers Guild of Great Britain and won two British Independent Film Awards: Most Promising Newcomer for Sam Adewunmi and Best Supporting Actress for Ruthxjiah Bellenea. Shola&#8217;s latest project, a VR experience called Violence, recently premiered at Cannes XR.

film essay