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Talkhouse

As lead vocalist of the Bush Tetras, a seminal post-punk band in New York  City, Cynthia Sley produced some of the most distinctive aspects of the Tetras sounds. Sley&#8217;s vocals were half spoken, half sung and in songs like &#8220;Too Many Creeps&#8221; and &#8220;You Can&#8217;t Be Funky&#8221; she repeated simple phrases creating a hypnotic monotony similar to Pat Place&#8217;s guitar rhythms. &#8220;Too Many Creeps&#8221; was a mainstay of the infamous early &#8217;80s New York &#8220;No Wave&#8221; club scene.

Cynthia Sley

Music

Bush Tetras and ESG Have a Blast From the Past

country girl’s upbringing was steeped in orchestral tradition and solitude. As a home schooled teenager, he enrolled in Juiliard’s Precollege program to study flute. At the age of 16, he discovered contemporary genres, now citing minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and slick projects in the vein of Air as key influences.
country girl is based in Brooklyn, and his latest EP, patience, is out now on FADER Label.

country girl

What Zohran Means For Alternative Music in New York

Delilah Napier and Lucy Powers are a writing/filmmaking team, who have made four films together under Drama House Pictures. Their first feature film, Voyeur, which they made for $4,000 while undergraduates at Yale, is now on Amazon Prime and won Best US Feature and Audience Award at the 2020 SoHo International Film Festival. Their short film The Compound won the Special Jury Prize at the Chelsea Film Festival in 2021 and their comedy pilot, Victor Versus the Metaverse, won Best TV Pilot at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. Their second feature, Floating Carousel will have its world premiere at the <a href="https://woodstockfilmfestival.org/2025-film-guide?filmId=687e4450e65ffc8913359594" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Woodstock Film Festival</a> on October 17. They are represented by UTA and currently developing a feature with Star Thrower Entertainment (King Richard, The Post, Ingrid Goes West).

Delilah Napier and Lucy Powers

Film

Left Swipe, Right Script: How a Dating App Mishap Became a Film

Sunflower Bean is a rock band from New York, consisting of Julia Cumming, Nick Kivlen, and Olive Faber. Their latest record, Mortal Primetime, is out now.

Sunflower Bean

GIFT and Sunflower Bean Are Reclaiming the Word “Psych”

Filmmaker and writer Alex R. Johnson’s debut novel, <a href="http://brooklynmotto.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brooklyn Motto</a>, will be released March 11. His feature film Two Step premiered to critical acclaim at SXSW in 2014 and went on to become a New York Times Critic’s Pick, as well as remaining 100% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Prior to writing and directing, Johnson was a seasoned NYC-based commercial and documentary producer. He started his career at the legendary Maysles Films and then branched off to work with other directors. In 2010, he produced the feature documentary I Am Secretly an Important Man for filmmaker Pete Sillen. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. (Photo by FJ Parsa.)

Alex R. Johnson

Alone, Together

Emily Packer is the director/producer of the new documentary, <a href="https://www.holdingbackthetidefilm.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Holding Back the Tide</a>, opens September 6 at DCTV&#8217;s Firehouse Cinema in New York City and October 4 at Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles, via Grasshopper Film. Emily’s directorial work has been screened at film festivals and theaters across the country, including at Anthology Film Archives, BlackStar, DOCNYC, and others. Emily’s short most recent film By Way of Canarsie, which she co-directed with Lesley Steele, is streaming on the Criterion Channel and was a part of POV Shorts Season 6. As an editor, Emily’s work has been featured in the New Yorker, PBS, and on Vimeo Staff Picks. Emily also serves on programming committees for film festivals in New York City, was a fellow in the 2018 Collaborative Studio at UnionDocs in Brooklyn, and is a proud alumna of the anomalous Hampshire College. Emily collects voicemails for future use; consider yourself notified.

Emily Packer

My Serendipitous Stint as Fishmonger-Filmmaker

New York-based director Crystal Moselle is a storyteller of both documentary and fiction films. She is best known for her Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary The Wolfpack which was later distributed by Magnolia Pictures. After the success of The Wolfpack, she met a group of female skateboarders on the train, who would become her main collaborators and subjects on three projects. The first was a narrative short That One Day which premiered at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival. Shortly after that, they expanded the film into a feature, which Crystal co-wrote and directed named after the infamous group Skate Kitchen, which premiered at Sundance 2018 and was later distributed by Magnolia to critical acclaim. In the same year, Crystal was nominated for the Breakthrough Director Award at the Gotham Awards for her direction of the film. The third collaboration is the upcoming HBO series <a href="https://www.hbo.com/betty" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Betty</a>, which premieres on May 1. (Picture by Brigitte Lacombe.)

Crystal Moselle

People-Watching in NYC

An award-winning filmmaker who has worked for both Hollywood and in the indie world, Charles Lane has made feature films in several genres. His debut feature film, Sidewalk Stories won 13 International awards and has become a global darling, and is still playing in indie theaters throughout Europe. His leaning, it appears, has been in comedy. He is currently crowdfunding his latest project, the web series PleaseDateMeNow.com, on <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1267459917/please-date-me-nowcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kickstarter</a>.

Charles Lane

Orpheus and Eurydice in the Blackout

Richard Shepard’s first documentary feature, <a href="https://filmforum.org/film/film-geek" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Film Geek</a>, premiered at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles this past fall and is screening for two weeks at Film Forum in New York City starting May 17. He is an Emmy- and DGA-winning director/writer whose feature films include the Golden Globe-nominated The Matador, starring Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear; Dom Hemingway, starring Jude Law and Richard E. Grant; and The Perfection, starring Allison Williams and Logan Browning. In his career, Shepard has directed 10 television pilots to pick-up including Criminal Minds; Ugly Betty, for which Shepard won the Director’s Guild award and Emmy award; the Golden Globe- and Emmy-nominated Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist; and Acapulco for Apple, now in its third season. Through its six seasons, Shepard directed 12 episodes of the Golden Globe-winning HBO series Girls, including the controversial “American Bitch” episode, for which Matthew Rhys received an Emmy nomination, as well as several Emmy-nominated episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale. He recently directed the final two episodes of the multiple Emmy-nominated Welcome to Chippendales, a Hulu limited series. Shepard’s HBO documentary I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale was nominated for an Emmy award.

Richard Shepard

Film-Geeking

Eszter Balint is a singer-songwriter actor and violinist. She has released four albums, and has contributed vocals and/or violin to works by Michael Gira and Swans, John Lurie. Marc Ribot, and Tammy Faye Starlight. Eszter grew up as a child member of the avant-garde theater company Squat Theatre. She has appeared in starring and featured roles in films by Jim Jarmusch, Woody Allen, Steve Buscemi, Louis CK, and alongside David Bowie. She is currently developing a theatrical show, I Hate Memory!, featuring songs co-written by Stew (of Stew &amp; The Negro Problem and the Tony Award winning show Passing Strange. (Photo by Eric Schneider.)

Eszter Balint

Wake Up. The Century Has Moved On.

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

New York City in the ’70s was a Wonderland

Wendy Eisenberg (guitar/vocals), Josh Daniel (drums), and Steve Cameron (bass) formed Editrix in Western Massachusetts in early 2018. The &#8220;avant butt-rock&#8221; band&#8217;s debut album Tell Me I&#8217;m Bad is out now on Exploding In Sound Records.
(Photo Credit: Ernest Berenger)

New York City