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Talkhouse

Albert Birney is a Baltimore-based filmmaker. He has directed four feature films, The Beast Pageant (co-directed with Jon Moses), Sylvio and Strawberry Mansion (both co-directed with <a href="http://www.kentuckeraudley.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kentucker Audley</a>), and Tux and Fanny. Sylvio was named one of the 10 best films of 2017 by <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2017-in-review/the-best-movies-of-2017" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New Yorker</a>. He recently finished making a Tux and Fanny <a href="https://abirney.com/Tux-and-Fanny-Video-Game" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video game</a> with <a href="http://gabrielkoenig.com/ghosttime/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gabriel Koenig</a>, which is now available from the Nintendo store and itch.io. He is currently animating part two of <a href="https://www.instagram.com/tux_and_fanny/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tux and Fanny</a>.

Albert Birney

Film

Dr. Mario or: How I Learned to Love Video Games Again and Accidentally Made One

Michael M. Bilandic is a New York-based filmmaker. His first feature, Happy Life, was called the &#8220;poor schlub&#8217;s High Fidelity&#8221; by Variety. His latest film, <a href="https://www.roxycinematribeca.com/blog/micheal-m-bilandic-retrospective-at-roxy-cinema-and-premiere-of-new-film-project-space-13/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Project Space 13</a>, opens on December 3 at The Roxy.

Michael M. Bilandic

reRunning Happy Life

Ryan Spahn is an actor, filmmaker and writer. He has been published by Rotten Tomatoes, Metro Weekly, USA Today, IntoMore, and American Theatre Magazine. As an actor, he can be seen in American Horror Story, Succession, The Bite, Chicago P.D., and Modern Love. Ryan is a graduate of Juilliard and is based in New York City. Go <a href="https://linktr.ee/RyanSpahn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a> for more info.

Ryan Spahn

Make the Yuletide Gay

Andy Ostroy is a film and television producer and director. His latest project, Adrienne, is an HBO documentary he produced and directed about his late wife, actor/writer/director Adrienne Shelly, who was murdered in 2006. Following her death, he produced Serious Moonlight, a script she&#8217;d written, and which starred Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton and was directed by Cheryl Hines. He&#8217;s working on producing a stage version of the script, and is also in development with a television series. He founded the Adrienne Shelly Foundation in 2006 which supports female filmmakers with grants and scholarships. and serves as the organization’s executive director.

Andy Ostroy

My Journey to Adrienne

Pete Ohs writes, directs, shoots and edits. His latest film, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B09L77C3SG/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Youngstown</a>, is now streaming on Amazon Prime. He is a four-time Emmy-Award winner and was named one of Filmmaker Magazine&#8216;s &#8220;25 New Faces of Independent Film&#8221; for 2013. His feature-length sci-fi film Everything Beautiful Is Far Away stars Julia Garner &amp; Joseph Cross. premiered in competition at the 2017 Los Angeles Film Festival, where it received the U.S. Fiction Cinematography Award, was acquired by The Orchard and is currently available to stream online. He edited the features Beast Beast directed by Danny Madden, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and Olympic Dreams, starring Nick Kroll and Alexi Pappas and directed by Jeremy Teicher, which premiered at the 2019 SXSW Film Festival and was named one of the 10 best films at the Festival by both Hollywood Reporter and Indiewire. He lives and works in Los Angeles. (Photo by Christian Sorensen Hansen.)

Pete Ohs

No Script. No Budget. No Crew. No Problem.

Niav Conty is an active freelance director, cinematographer and screenwriter in New York City. Her award-winning films have travelled to festivals worldwide. She is a recipient of the Kodak Award for cinematography, and the prestigious Princess Grace Award. Small Time, her 2020 feature shot in rural Pennsylvania, is out now. It has won 9 awards, including the Spirit of Freedom Award, the EDA award for best female-directed feature, and four Best Feature awards. She is currently in post-production on her newest feature, Person Woman Man Camera Tv, about an interracial couple disintegrating during the 2020 pandemic. Read more at her official website, <a href="http://www.niav-film.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">niav-film.com</a>.

Niav Conty

Realer Than Reality

Christopher Makoto Yogi is an artist and filmmaker from Honolulu, Hawai‘i. His debut feature film, the award-winning August at Akiko’s, had its world premiere at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam in 2018 to critical acclaim and was named by Richard Brody in The New Yorker as one of the best films of 2019. <a href="https://strandreleasing.com/films/i-was-a-simple-man/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I Was a Simple Man</a>, his second feature film, had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and is in theaters through Strand Releasing from November 19. Chris’ short films include the documentaries Occasionally, I Saw Glimpses of Hawai‘i and Makoto: or, Honesty, and the fiction film Obake (Ghosts). Chris is a fellow of Berlinale Talents, Visual Communications’ Armed with a Camera, Kyoto Filmmakers Lab, and New York Film Festival Artists Academy.

Christopher Makoto Yogi

Parenthood, Panic Attacks and Premiering at Sundance

Jim Cummings is the writer, director, and actor behind Thunder Road and The Wolf of Snow Hollow. His latest feature, <a href="https://www.ifcfilms.com/films/the-beta-test" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Beta Test</a>, which he co-directed, co-write and co-starred in with PJ McCabe, is in theaters and on demand now.

Jim Cummings

Little Forest, Comfort Film, and the Neuroscience of Genrefluidity

Allisyn Snyder is a writer, director, producer and co-owner of Watch The Footage (WTF) Productions. Her debut feature, Howdy Neighbor!, is now on the festival circuit. She began her career in the entertainment industry as an actress at only four years old, rose to prominence in her teens in the Disney Channel shows Sonny with a Chance, alongside Demi Lovato, and So Random, and is currently appearing in the NBC sitcom AP Bio opposite Glenn Howerton and Patton Oswalt. In her late teens, Allisyn began writing sketches for AwesomenessTV and created YouTube personality <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/astridclover" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Astrid Clover</a>, releasing a new episode every Friday for seven years while gaining a loyal following over 350 original episodes. In 2015, Allisyn formed <a href="https://www.watchthefootageproductions.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Watch The Footage Productions</a> with her now-husband Dylan Snyder and began writing and producing award-winning short films such as Nasty Habits and Room 566. When not in front of or behind the camera, Allisyn enjoys ocean scuba diving and roller derby, and studies the graceful and demanding art of trapeze with her younger sister Josie. She is a prolific artist, whose dark and whimsical characters have been invited to gallery showings since she was only 15 years old.

Allisyn Snyder

How Spending My 18th Birthday Tied to a Chair Shaped Me as a Filmmaker

James Ashcroft is the writer, director and executive producer of Coming Home in the Dark, which had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and is out now in select theaters and on VOD through Dark Sky Films. He is a graduate of Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School, Victoria University and has studied with New York’s prestigious theatre company The Wooster Group. He served as development producer on the New Zealand Film Commission-funded feature This Town, which was released in 2020. From 2007 to 2013m he was the CEO/Artistic Director of multi-award winning Māori Theatre Company Taki Rua Productions. His short films and web series works have screened at multiple festivals. (Photo by Stan Alley.)

James Ashcroft (Ngati Kahu/Nga Puhi)

Adaptation as Collaboration

Producer-actress Katherine Waddell is best known for her work as an actor and co-executive producer on acclaimed indie feature Dinner in America, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. She recently completed the coming-of-age film Balloon Animal, shot entirely during COVID-19, in which she plays lead character Poppy, a girl who makes balloon animals at a traveling circus. It is also the debut feature produced by her new female-driven production company, First Bloom Films, created with director Em Johnson. She recently executive produced IFC’s We Need to Do Something, a horror feature starring Vinessa Shaw which premiered at 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. Her first major producing credit came from her role as associate producer on Gasoline Films’ Six LA Love Stories, starring Alicia Witt and Matthew Lillard. For the past few years, Katherine has worked as an associate producer at Poitier &amp; Dunaway Motion Pictures and Gasoline Films. (Photo by Leah Tribett.)

Katherine Waddell

How My First Film Was Sabotaged from Within

Amy Northup recently made her directorial debut on the feature film <a href="https://1091.tv/what-she-said" target="_blank" rel="noopener">What She Said</a>, which is out now on digital platforms through 1091 Releasing. She is an <a href="http://www.amynorthup.com/intimacycoordinating" target="_blank" rel="noopener">intimacy coordinator</a> and director with a diverse and extensive background in film and theatre, sexual violence prevention, advocacy, and rape crisis counseling. Amy also teaches a class called “Beyond Yes And,” a course that seeks to undo the narrative that a “good” actor says yes to everything, and gives performers tools for recognizing and advocating for their boundaries. She is the Community Nightlife Liaison with <a href="https://www.outsmartnyc.org/">OutSmartNYC</a>, a non-profit dedicated to sexual violence prevention in Nightlife and Hospitality spaces, and is a trained Crisis Counselor with the <a href="https://www.cvtcnyc.org/">Crime Victims Treatment Center</a> in New York City. In 2019, she was awarded the first ever Lydia Martinez Emerging Leader in Sexual Violence Prevention by the <a href="http://www.svfreenyc.org/">New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault</a>. (Photo by Laura Rose.)

film essay