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Talkhouse

Alexander Canepa is president of Eight Hills Productions and the writer-director of the new feature film <a href="https://www.eighthillsproductions.com/mrsbooker" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mrs. Booker on 8th Avenue</a>, which he also edited and scored. Mrs Booker has played at a number of film festivals and received the Reel Life award at the Chattanooga Film Festival. He wrote, directed and produced his first short feature, Meringue, in 2020, which was accepted into the Los Angeles Shorts Film Festival.
Danielle Canepa is an entertainment marketing executive and the CEO of Eight Hills Productions. She launched her career at Lionsgate and worked on a wide variety of film releases, ranging from independent films to big-budget wide-theatrical releases. She founded Eight Hills Productions in 2020 with her brother, Alexander Canepa. Danielle graduated with Honors from USC, earning a degree that combined Communications from the Annenberg School with a focus on Consumer Behavior from the Marshall School of Business.

Alexander and Danielle Canepa

Film

Polar Opposites

Jesse Locke is a writer and musician based in Vancouver. He is the co-founder of the record label <a href="https://wearetime.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">We Are Time</a> with NYC post-punk pre-teen <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/13/chandra-oppenheim-interview" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chandra Oppenheim</a>, and the author of <a href="https://eternalcavalierpress.square.site/product/heavy-metalloid-music-the-story-of-simply-saucer/8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Heavy Metalloid Music</a>, the biography of 1970s psych/proto-punk band Simply Saucer, published by Eternal Cavalier Press. Jesse currently writes for outlets including Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, and CBC Music, and plays drums for bands such as Tough Age, Big Rig, and CHANDRA. Follow him on social media at <a href="https://twitter.com/wipeoutbeat">@wipeoutbeat</a>.

Jesse Locke

Music

CBGB is the Most Cringe-Inducing Musical Biopic

Julia Marchese is a filmmaker, writer, actor, podcaster, film programmer, VHS Vixen &amp; film critic. She’s known for directing the award-winning feature documentary Out of Print, an acclaimed exploration of repertory cinema culture and film preservation. She also adapted Stephen King’s short story I Know What You Need into an award-winning short film. Julia co-hosts the podcasts Horror Movie Survival Guide, The Loser’s Club and JodoWOWsky, reviews a VHS from her rainbow wall every day on her social media channels and writes about cinema for Talkhouse. Her work frequently explores nostalgia, genre cinema, physical media culture, and the communal power of moviegoing. She is @juliacmarchese on all platforms.

Julia Marchese

My Wall of VHS

Kailey and Sam Spear are director-writer-actors (and twin sisters) currently based in Vancouver and represented out of Los Angeles. Their passion lies in character-based genre film, particularly world building in fantasy and sci-fi. They have directed both in both theatre and film, winning awards for many of their short films. (Links for their short films can be found on <a href="https://www.thespearsisters.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">their website</a>.) Their first television directing job was for season 2 of CW’s horror anthology Two Sentence Horror Stories; they were brought back for two more episodes in the next season (one of which ended up becoming the season 3 premiere). Their latest work, the second episode of season 4 of Shudder’s <a href="https://www.amc.com/shows/creepshow--1002218">Creepshow</a>, “The Hat / Grieving Process,” airs on October 20. (Photo by Kristine Cofsky.)

Kailey and Sam Spear

The Spear Sisters on Discovering Where the Story Lives

Noah Schamus is a filmmaker of both documentary and narrative films. Their first feature, Summer Solstice, had its world premiere at Provincetown Film Festival in June 2023, and has played at festivals including Deauville, Mill Valley and Woodstock, among others, and <a href="https://newfest.org/events/summersolstice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">screens at NewFest on October 21</a>. The film was the recipient of the Panavision New Filmmaker grant, was a Notable Writer Project at the Outfest Screenwriting Lab, and won the Platige Image Award at US in Progress at the American Film Festival. Their most recent hybrid documentary short, The Script, co-directed with Brit Fryer, and produced by Multitude Films, was supported by Chicken &amp; Egg Pictures and the Ford Foundation. The film premiered at CPH:DOX 2023, and has screened at Frameline, BlackStar and others. (Photo by Leah James.)

Noah Schamus

How Watching The Real Housewives Made Me a Better Filmmaker

Sonia Kennebeck is an independent documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist with more than 20 years of directing and producing experience. She has directed eight television documentaries and more than 50 investigative reports. National Bird, her first feature-length film, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival 2016 and was also selected for Tribeca, Sheffield, and IDFA. She lives in New York where she runs her own production company, Codebreaker Films, that makes films about international politics and human rights. Her latest film, <a href="https://www.codebreakerfilms.com/reality-winner" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reality Winner</a>, is currently playing in select theaters across the United States.
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Sonia Kennebeck

The (Real) Reason I Made a Film About Reality Winner

Luis De Filippis is a Canadian-Italian filmmaker whose debut feature, Something You Said Last Night (2022) which received the TIFF Change Maker Award, the Sebastiáne Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival, and the Rotterdam Youth Jury Award, is out now in theaters. Her other work includes the short film For Nonna Anna (2017), which received a Sundance Special Jury Prize. (Photograph by Mar Marriott, courtesy Luis De Filippis.)

Luis De Filippis

On Being My Own Muse

Signe Baumane’s new animated feature, <a href="https://www.myloveaffairwithmarriagemovie.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">My Love Affair with Marriage</a>, which fuses animation with music, theater, science, photography, three-dimensional sets and traditional hand-drawn animation to tell the story of a spirited young woman&#8217;s quest for perfect Love and lasting Marriage, opens October 6 in New York City. She is a Latvian-born, Brooklyn-based independent filmmaker, artist, writer, and animator. She has made 17 award-winning animated shorts and is best known for her first animated feature, Rocks in my Pockets, which covers a 100-year history of depression and suicide of women in her family, including herself. It premiered at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2014 where it won a FIPRESCI prize, went on to over 130 international festivals and opened theatrically in the U.S. through Zeitgeist Films. Signe is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow in Film for New York Foundation for the Arts. She has a degree in Philosophy from Moscow State University.

Signe Baumane

On Lasse, Lisa and Some Like It Hot

Sarah Labowitz is the producer of <a href="https://www.texasusafilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Texas, USA</a>, which is out in theaters on October 6. She is a Houston-based policy expert. She is a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and previously worked in leadership roles at the ACLU of Texas and the City of Houston Housing and Community Development Department, and was a policy advisor at the U.S. Department of State. She co-founded and co-directed the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. Sarah was included in Forbes’ inaugural 30 Under 30 list for law and policy. Texas, USA is her first film project.

Sarah Labowitz

The Fight for Democracy: A Texas Story

Emily MacKenzie and Noah Collier are the directors of the new documentary <a href="https://memory.is/carpet-cowboys" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Carpet Cowboys</a>, which is out now. Emily is a New Orleans-based director and producer who has produced and directed for HBO, Vice, MTV, Fuse, Discovery Networks, WEtv, and Channel 4, among others. Noah is a director and cinematographer born in New York City working primarily in the non-fiction sphere, with credits that include the Sundance Special Jury Award-winning Jawline (Hulu 2019), Santa Camp (HBO 2022), and The Come Up (Freeform 2022).

Emily MacKenzie and Noah Collier

“Then … a Volcano Erupted”

Aitch Alberto is a writer-director born and raised in Miami, Florida, whose debut feature, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, is out now in theaters. The film, based on the award-winning young adult novel of the same name, was produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eugenio Debrez. Aitch has written on Duster, a 1970s-set crime drama series from J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan for HBO Max and WBTV, and on AppleTV+’s BAFTA and Film Independent Nominated anthology series Little America from Alan Yang, Kumail Nanjiani, and Emily V. Gordon. Aitch has most recently been featured on Variety’s 10 Directors To Watch for 2022 and Indiewire’s 22 Rising Female Filmmakers to Watch in 2022.

Aitch Alberto

Dear Dad, or the Power of Violent Forgiveness

Danny O&#8217;Malley is a Grammy- and James Beard-nominated film director whose debut feature, <a href="https://canary.oscilloscope.net/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Canary</a>, is out now. Best known for his work on Netflix&#8217;s Chef&#8217;s Table, where he serves as co-executive producer and a director. Danny has worked filming with bands across the U.S., including Tegan and Sara, The Rentals, The Decemberists, Kraftwerk, and more. His documentary “States,” from Tegan and Sara&#8217;s release Get Along, was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Long Form Music Video. Danny made his mark in documentary television working as a story producer, where his work has aired on Netflix, Fox Sports 1 and NBC. On Chef&#8217;sTable, Danny is a key force behind the character-driven storytelling that is the show’s signature. Danny and his directing partner, Alex Rivest,PhD, won the Alfred P. Sloan development grant in 2017, which led to the creation of Canary.

film essay