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Talkhouse

New York-based Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese-American director-producer whose debut feature, <a href="https://ascensiondocumentary.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ascension</a>, a striking observational portrait of the “New China” which is nominated for six Critics Choice Documentary Awards and the Gotham Award for Best Documentary, is now streaming on Paramount+. She was named one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine and selected for the 2020 DOC NYC “40 Under 40” list. Her shorts include the award-winning Commodity City (2017), It&#8217;s Coming! (2020), and Routine Island (2019), and her producer credits include Tania Cypriano’s Born to Be (2019), Ian Bell’s 808: How We Respond (2019), Nathan Truesdell’s The Water Slide (2018), and Johnny Ma’s Old Stone (2016). She is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective. (Photo by Tomo Saito.)

Jessica Kingdon

Film

Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie, Or How I Found My Family in China

Actress, writer and director Sarah Wayne Callies became known to audiences for her portrayal of Sara Tancredi in Prison Break and followed that up with the even bigger hit, The Walking Dead. She then starred opposite Josh Holloway in the series Colony and most recently was seen in the NBC series Council of Dads. Sarah has taken the leap into directing with an episode of the limited series Unspeakable as well as an episode of the final season of Colony. As a writer, Sarah has several screenplays in development with various motion picture entities. As a film actress, Sarah has appeared in Giancarlo Esposito’s This is Your Death opposite Josh Duhamel and Famke Janssen, Pay the Ghost with Nicolas Cage, and Black November opposite Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. Continuing her passion for storytelling, Sarah is a producer and the voice of the new science-fiction post-apocalyptic podcast <a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-aftershock-83996090/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Aftershock</a>. (Photo by Nicolas Gerardin.)

Sarah Wayne Callies

I Love Difficult Women

Bryan Wizemann is an independent writer, producer, director and editor of film based in Brooklyn, NY. <a href="http://www.factorytwentyfive.com/you-mean-everything-to-me/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">You Mean Everything to Me</a>, his fourth feature film, stars Morgan Saylor, Ben Rosenfield and Lindsay Burge and is out December 17 through Factory 25. He previously wrote and directed About Sunny, starring Lauren Ambrose, Dylan Baker, and Penelope Ann Miller, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead, and was distributed by Oscilloscope. His feature Losing Ground was adapted from his critically acclaimed New York stage play and features the original cast. It premiered at Cinequest with distribution by FilmBuff. His first film, the experimental 16mm feature Sense, starring Maria Dizzia, was programmed at the Johnson Museum of Art and the Angelika Film Centre. (Image by Jeff Vespa, used with permission.)

Bryan Wizemann

The Long Shadow of Las Vegas

Maya Cozier’s debut feature, <a href="http://www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com/she-paradise/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">She Paradise</a>, is out now through Samuel Goldwyn Films. Cozier was raised by artist parents — Irenée Shaw and Christopher Cozier — in the Caribbean twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She gained years of experience working as a dancer/choreographer for music videos and television shows (on her own and as part of a champion hip-hop crew that represented the island at the World Hip-Hop Dance Championships). At age 18, Maya had her first international gig when Nicki Minaj flew to Trinidad with Hype Williams to direct the “Pound the Alarm” music video. It was on set as a background model that she became fascinated with the process of filmmaking. After being awarded a national academic scholarship, she enrolled at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, to pursue a degree in film. Her first short film was about a childhood friend, Shan, a limbo dancer, touring the United States with a Circus. Her thesis film, Short Drop, a story in which a recently widowed retiree’s car is mistaken for an illegal taxi bringing together unlikely individuals in Port of Spain, won the NYWIFT student award and has shown at over 20 film festivals worldwide winning best Caribbean short film at Curacao film festival and best short film at Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival.

Maya Cozier

How Entering a Beauty Pageant Helped Me Make My Debut Feature

Joel Cohen, John Frink and Rob LaZebnik are the writers and producers of the animated comedy <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81159137" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Extinct</a>, featuring the voices of Adam DeVine, Rachel Bloom, Zazie Beetz, Ken Jeong, Reggie Watts and Catherine O&#8217;Hara, which is currently streaming on Netflix. Together they have their own production company, Tolerable Entertainment. The trio has worked together as writer-producers on The Simpson for the past 20 years, winning a number of Emmys in the process. They live in Los Angeles.

Joel Cohen, John Frink and Rob LaZebnik

There Is No “I” in Collaboration

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

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.

film essay