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Talkhouse

Writer-director Katherine Dieckmann’s latest film, Strange Weather, starring Holly Hunter, is available on digital and through Netflix. Her previous features are A Good Baby (2000), Diggers (2006), and Motherhood (2009). Dieckmann was the original director on Nickelodeon’s groundbreaking series The Adventures of Pete &amp; Pete, and has directed music videos for Sharon Van Etten, R.E.M., Wilco, Aimee Mann, Throwing Muses and Vic Chesnutt, among other bands. She is a Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of the Arts Film Program, where she teaches screenwriting.

Katherine Dieckmann

Film

Blurring the Edges: Sharon Van Etten’s “Jupiter 4”

Angela Shelton is the writer-director of <a href="https://heartbabythemovie.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Heart, Baby</a>, based on the true story of boxer George Lee Martin, starring Gbenga Akinnagbe and Jackson Rathbone; the film is now playing in select theaters. Shelton had her first screenwriting and producing credit with Tumbleweeds (1999), which won the Sundance Film Festival Filmmaker’s Trophy and earned the lead actress Janet McTeer an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe win. She followed Tumbleweeds with her highly acclaimed adaptation of Kaye Gibbons’ novel Charms For The Easy Life (2002), starring Mimi Rogers and Gena Rowlands. In 2001 Angela made her directorial debut with the documentary Searching For Angela Shelton, in which she discovered that 70% of the women she interviewed with the same name had, like herself, been a victim of rape, childhood sexual abuse and/or domestic violence. The film received many accolades and went on to begin a grassroots movement of survivors and humanitarian organizations around the world dedicated to exposing the epidemic of abuse. Her memoir, Finding Angela Shelton, published by Meredith Publishing in 2006, describes how making the documentary changed her life. She is currently in development on her second feature.

Angela Shelton

Reuniting Friends Through Movies

Stacy Cochran made her directorial debut with My New Gun, starring Diane Lane; it premiered in Directors&#8217; Fortnight at Cannes and earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature. Subsequent projects include Touchstone title Boys, the short doc Richard Lester!, and Drop Back Ten, which premiered in Dramatic Competition at Sundance. Her latest film, <a href="https://www.writewhenyougetworkmovie.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Write When You Get Work</a>, is released theatrically by Abramorama on November 23.

Stacy Cochran

Waking Up Back in the Movie Business

Jennifer Fox is the writer, director and producer of <a href="https://www.hbo.com/movies/the-tale" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Tale</a>, her autobiographical drama about childhood sexual abuse, starring Laura Dern, Isabelle Nélisse, Jason Ritter, Elizabeth Debicki, Ellen Burstyn and Common, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The film aired in 2018 on HBO, was nominated for two Emmys and is currently up for Breakthrough Director at the Gotham Independent Film Awards and Best First Screenplay, Best First Feature and Best Editing at the Independent Spirit Awards. Fox&#8217;s groundbreaking works as a director include Beirut: The Last Home Movie, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1988 Sundance Film Festival; the Gracie Award–winning An American Love Story; Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman and the Emmy nominee My Reincarnation. Fox has also executive produced several award-winning films, including On the Ropes, an Academy Award nominee for best documentary feature.

Jennifer Fox

The Tale of Doing Everything Wrong to Make Something Right

Shraysi Tandon is a documentary filmmaker whose directorial debut <a href="https://www.firstrunfeatures.com/invisiblehands.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Invisible Hands</a>, the first feature film to expose child labor and child trafficking within the supply chains of the world’s biggest corporations. The film is released by First Run Features, and opens in New York at Cinema Village on November 23, and in Los Angeles at Laemmle Glendale on  November 30. A journalist by background, Shraysi was a reporter and anchor for CGTN America, covering business, economics and finance. At 25, she became the youngest Bloomberg TV reporter and helped oversee Bloomberg TV’s Australia coverage. As a reporter, Shraysi has interviewed such figures as Israeli President Shimon Peres, U.S. Vice President Al Gore, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Academy Award winner Matt Damon, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Nobel laureates Muhammad Yunus and Kailash Satyarthi. She currently lives in New York.

Shraysi Tandon

This is the One

Cameron Yates is a filmmaker and curator. His latest feature, the documentary <a href="https://www.kinolorber.com/film/chef-flynn" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chef Flynn</a>, a portrait of culinary prodigy Flynn McGarry, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and is currently in select theaters through Kino Lorber. His first film, 14 and Payrolled, a half-hour portrait of four teenagers working as pages for the Virginia House of Delegates, premiered on PBS in 2003. His first feature documentary, The Canal Street Madam, the story of a New Orleans madam who ran a brothel with her mother and daughter until she was busted by the FBI, world premiered at the 2010 SXSW Film Festival. A former World Cinema and Documentary Programmer for the Hamptons International Film Festival, Yates has also worked with Albert Maysles, Zeitgeist Films, Sundance, NewFest LGBT Film Fest, and has been a contributor to IndieWire.

Cameron Yates

My Year as a Shirkers Groupie

Known for directing and executive producing Adult Swim’s groundbreaking late-night comedy The Eric Andre Show, Kitao Sakurai began his eclectic career as a child actor in Cleveland, Ohio. As a teenager, Kitao dropped out of school, moved to New York and entered the world of opera and experimental theater, collaborating with renowned director Doug Fitch on productions at the Stockholm Royal Philharmonic, Lincoln Center and elsewhere. Kitao then shifted his focus to cinematography, lensing numerous rap videos and indie features such as Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me. In 2010, Kitao wrote and directed the internationally celebrated feature Aardvark and shortly thereafter began his collaboration with comedian Eric Andre. His latest film, the award-winning short <a href="https://www.tbs.com/clips/the-passage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Passage</a>, written by and starring Philip Burgers, is now online.

Kitao Sakurai

How We Made The Passage

Chris Caldwell is a writer-director based in Seattle, WA, where with Zeek Earl he founded the production company Shep Films. Caldwell and Earl&#8217;s first short film, In the Pines, premiered at SXSW in 2012. <a href="http://www.shepfilms.com/prospect" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Prospect</a>, their feature debut now in theaters, is based on their short of the same name which also premiered at SXSW in 2014.
Alex Park is a Seattle-based visual artist. He has been a long-time collaborator with Zeek Earl Chris and Caldwell, directing and shooting commercials for their production company Shep Films. He was the graphic design lead for Prospect during pre-production and camera operator during production.

Chris Caldwell and Alex Park

Painted Rust: Building the World of Prospect

Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Wearing mask and merkin, she works at the intersection of performance, dance, art, and activism in a range of media including film, video art, and experimental music. She actively integrates her prior experience as a professional dancer and commercial artist with her art practice in a range of media including photography, video art, and experimental music. Her first feature film, <a href="http://www.narcissister.com/film/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Narcissister Organ Player</a>, premiered at Sundance and SXSW in 2018 and starts its theatrical release through Film Movement on November 7 at Film Forum in New York City. She has presented work worldwide at festivals, nightclubs, museums, and galleries. Her art video Vaseline won “Best Use of a Sex Toy” at The Good Vibrations Erotic Film Festival. She received a Bessie Award nomination for the theatrical performance of Organ Player and 2015 Creative Capital and United States Artists Awards. Interested in troubling the popular entertainment and experimental art divide, she appeared on America’s Got Talent. In collaboration with playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, she is a Sundance Theatre Lab 2018 Fellow for the development of a new evening length performance commissioned by the Soho Rep in New York that will premiere in 2019. (Image by Ava Porter.)

Narcissister

i remember

Maxim Pozdorovkin is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and media curator based in New York City. He is the director of three feature-length documentaries and numerous short films. His films include Pussy Riot: a Punk Prayer, The Notorious Mr. Bout and Capital. Maxim holds a PhD from Harvard University and was a junior fellow at Harvard&#8217;s Society of Fellows. His latest film, <a href="https://ournewpresident.us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Our New President</a>, premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and is now available on iTunes.

Maxim Pozdorovkin

How To Make Fun of Donald Trump

Victoria Negri is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and actor. Her directorial debut, <a href="http://goldstar-film.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gold Star</a>, which she also wrote and stars in, world premiered at the Buffalo International Film Festival in October 2016, where it won the Audience Award, was released theatrically in fall 2017, and is currently available through Amazon Prime. Negri is currently in development on her second feature as writer-director, Ultra.

Victoria Negri

How Running Makes Me a Better Artist

Jennifer Yuh Nelson&#8216;s first live-action feature, the young-adult sci-fi movie The Darkest Minds, is in theaters through 20th Century Fox from August 3. Nelson previously gained critical acclaim for her career in animation. She made her feature film directorial debut with Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), which earned more than $665 million at the worldwide box-office as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, and directed the franchise’s successful follow-up Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016) alongside Alessandro Carloni. Prior to her directorial career, Nelson lent her talents to a variety of DreamWorks Animation pictures, including as head of story for Kung Fu Panda (2008), for which she also directed the two-minute hand-drawn opening sequence. She also was a story artist on Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) and Madagascar (2005). Born in South Korea, Nelson and her family moved to California where she attended California State University, Long Beach receiving a BFA in Illustration.

film essay