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Talkhouse

Cherien Dabis is a Palestinian-American filmmaker and actress whose new film, <a href="https://www.watermelonpictures.com/films/all-thats-left-of-you" target="_blank" rel="noopener">All That’s Left of You</a>, is in theaters from January 9. Dabis’ 2009 debut feature Amreeka, which she wrote and directed, had its world premiere at Sundance, and went on to win the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at Cannes, plus a dozen more international awards. It was also nominated for a Best Picture Gotham Award and three Independent Spirit Awards including Best Picture, Best First Screenplay and Best Actress. Dabis made her acting debut when she starred opposite Bill Pullman and Alia Shawkat in her second feature film, 2013 Sundance opener May in the Summer, which she also wrote and directed. On the small screen, Dabis has executive produced and directed standout episodes of Ozark, Only Murders in the Building and Golden Globe-winning Ramy and has guest-starred in the Gotham- and Peabody-winning Mo. In 2022, she was Emmy-nominated the groundbreaking, dialogue-free episode “The Boy From 6B” on Only Murders in the Building, which Variety hailed as “the episode of the year” and “a tour de force of directorial achievement.” Dabis resides in New York City. (Photo by Stephanie Diani.)

Cherien Dabis

Film

Silence Isn’t An Option

Greg Stewart is a film and television producer based out of Toronto. His most recent production was the HBO series Telemarketers.

Greg Stewart

Kanye West, Shia LaBeouf and What Happens When We Stop Talking About the Art

Eromose is an artist working in both visual and graphics. He spent his childhood in Nigeria and England before studying at Columbia University, New York. His first feature film, Legacy, premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Festival and his short film Nostradamus premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Festival. He returned to Tribeca for a third time in 2022 with the premiere of his feature political thriller, <a href="http://www.samuelgoldwynfilms.com/88-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">88</a>, which is out now in theaters through Samuel Goldwyn Films and is available to stream from March 24. Eromose writes, directs, produces and edits his films. He is also a coder and software developer. He now works independently on his various artistic and technological ventures.

Eromose

Decoding 88: How One Film Changed My Perspective on Race

Australian writer, director and actor Joy Hopwood’s latest film, the romantic comedy Rhapsody of Love, is out now through Quiver Distribution. She wrote the screenplay for The Casting Game and made her feature debut as writer-director with The Script of Life. She is currently in post-production on her third directorial feature, the rom-com musical Get a Life, Alright.

Joy Hopwood

Changing the Narrative of How Asians are Represented on Screen

Wendell B. Harris, Jr. is an American independent filmmaker whose 1990 indie classic <a href="http://arbelosfilms.com/films/chameleon-street/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chameleon Street</a> is out now in a new 4K restoration through Arbelos Films. He trained in drama at the prestigious Interlochen and Juilliard Schools, and his family founded Prismatic Images, an award-winning film/video/audio production facility in Flint, Michigan, in 1979. Harris spent three years crisscrossing the United States in order to film and record intimately intense interview for the radio/video series Black Biography showcasing the lives of Black icons from the spheres of art, history, and politics, as told in their own words and voices. In 1990, Prismatic Images released its first feature film, Chameleon Street, a biting satire based on “compulsive imposter” William Douglas Street, Jr. which won the won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. After three tumultuous years in Hollywood, Harris returned to Michigan and Prismatic Images to make Yeshua Vs. Frankenstein in 3D, a two-hour documentary devoted to the power of media as social engineer. He has also appeared as an actor in Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight and Todd Phillips’ Road Trip, while touring as a guest speaker at college and university campuses nationwide.

Wendell B. Harris, Jr.

Crayola Crayons and the Price of Being Black

Acclaimed writer, director and producer Tiller Russell creates character-led films that defy genre and display an incisive understanding of the criminal mind and the worlds that surround them. His four-part doc series, Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer, premiered on Netflix in early 2021 to rave reviews. Shortly after, Lionsgate released Silk Road, the real-life thriller Tiller wrote and directed about dark web kingpin Ross Ulbrich, starring Nick Robinson, Jason Clarke, Paul Walter Hauser and Alexandra Shipp. Tiller’s previous documentary series, The Last Narc, details the infamous 1985 cartel murder of DEA agent ‘Kiki’ Camarena and is now streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime. He also directed the crime documentaries Operation Odessa, about the true story of a Russian mobster, a Miami playboy, and a Cuban spy who teamed up in the early ’90s to sell a Soviet submarine to the Cali Cartel, and The Seven Five,which delves into rampant police corruption in New York’s 75th precinct during the 1990s.

Tiller Russell

Your favorite musicians, filmmakers, and other creative minds one-on-one. No moderator, no script, no typical questions. The Talkhouse Podcast offers unique insights into creative work from all genres and generations. <a href="https://pod.link/Talkhouse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Subscribe now</a>, and explore more illuminating shows on the <a href="https://talkhouse.com/category/podcast" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Talkhouse Podcast Network.</a>

Talkhouse Podcast

Podcast

Tiller Russell Talks with Kevin Willmott on the Talkhouse Podcast

Hedy Wong stars as the title character, Tera, in Take Out Girl, which is released May 18 by 1091 Pictures. Take Out Girl is her first feature film screenplay. She was born and raised in the Bay Area, Northern California. She moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and had since then booked national commercial campaigns such as Dove and Best Buy. She also appeared in music videos alongside Chris Brown, Lil Wayne, Tyga, A$AP Rocky and Tory Lanez. In her spare time, she enjoys writing and creating music.

Hedy Wong

Who is Take Out Girl? Or, How I Found a Way to Show Vulnerability and Accept Myself Through My First Feature

Li Dong&#8216;s debut feature, <a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/stealing-school/umc.cmc.3jpf16u22ws62f0yht0bryje" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stealing School</a>, a dark satirical comedy which spotlights systematic racism through the eyes of a female Asian student at a prestigious university, is out on VOD through Vertical Entertainment on February 26. Li graduated from Dalhousie University in 2006 with honours in English and history and then went on to graduate from Dalhousie Law School. After law school, Li played poker professionally before he was hand-selected by Oscar-nominated director Werner Herzog for his &#8220;Rogue Film School.&#8221; Li has since gone on to write and direct numerous short narratives, documentaries and music videos.

Li Dong

What It’s Like Releasing a Racially Charged Movie about a Chinese Immigrant During COVID-19

Sheila Vand is an extremely creative and expressive performance artist and actor. She can currently be seen in Dave Franco’s directorial debut, The Rental, currently #1 at the box office. Earlier this summer, she co-starred in TNT&#8217;s Snowpiercer opposite Daveed Diggs and Jennifer Connolly. Last year, she starred in a thrilling off-off-Broadway show, Nylon, written by Sofia Alverez. Additional credits include the 2018 Sundance Film Festival NEXT Award winner We The Animals, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Wave, Aardvark, Argo, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Women Who Kill and XX. Vand made her Broadway debut opposite Robin Williams as Hadja in Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer Prize finalist Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo; she starred in the Disney Hall&#8217;s 10th Anniversary LA Philharmonic staging of Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels for Esa Pekka Salonen, had her original performance piece Sneaky Nietzche mounted at LACMA and co-created the award-winning visual art series MILK: what will you make of me? with TED fellow Alexa Meade, which toured throughout Europe. This series served as the inspiration for Ariana Grande’s recent music video for “God Is A Woman,” on which Grande worked with Vand and Meade.

Sheila Vand

Racist?

Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, Courtney Coles was raised by two military veterans and is the eldest of three. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and her Master of Fine Arts in Photography and Media from the California Institute of the Arts. Her photographs are a mixture of collaboration with the people she is closest to and a visual diary of a Black Lesbian. Working with themes surrounding longing and belonging, she is interested in dissecting the various ways that people, places and memories are home.
Back in 2017, two Los Angeles-based music photographers, alongside  Erica Lauren Perez, she co-founded a pop-up traveling art show called To The Front. The idea behind it was to highlight underrepresented photographers in the music industry. Originally intended to be a one-time-only event, To The Front has since traveled to Nashville, Toronto, Boston, and more, and grown to include 50+ photographers across 10+ states.
With traveling not currently a safe or responsible option, Perez and Coles had to innovate and find a new way to bring TTF to music fans everywhere. With the help of Little Dipper, a music/art collective run by members of PUP and photographer Amanda Fotes, the two collaborated with the other photographers involved in the show to create their very first photo zine: To The Front Volume One: Black Lives Matter. The book will highlight works from artists part of To The Front, as well as essays and poetry that speak to the very issues that TTF was founded on. All proceeds will be donated to the Summaeverythang Community Center in South Central LA: <a href="https://summaeverythang.org/">https://summaeverythang.org/</a>

Courtney Coles

Music

An Excerpt From Courtney Coles’s To The Front

Onur Tukel is a writer, director and illustrator. Some of his films include Catfight, The Misogynists, Scenes From An Empty Church and Summer of Blood. He co-wrote the children&#8217;s books Let&#8217;s Make a Movie! and The Legend of Halloween with David Gordon Green, and his latest book, the illustrated novel <a href="https://www.pitchstonebooks.com/catalog/run-werewolf-run" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Run Werewolf Run</a>, is out now.

Onur Tukel

The Disappearing Act

Shola Amoo’s debut feature was a multimedia film called A Moving Image, which received the Special Recognition Award at the Blackstar Film Festival in Philadelphia, had its European Premiere at the BFI London Film Festival 2016 and was released theatrically in the U.K. in 2017 through Verve Pictures. Shola’s second feature was the drama <a href="https://t.co/tueFDP6Xna?amp=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Last Tree</a>, which premiered at Sundance 2019 in the World Cinema Dramatic competition. The film was released theatrically in the U.K. through Picturehouse Entertainment and opens <a href="https://www.bam.org/film/2020/lfb-the-last-tree" target="_blank" rel="noopener">virtually via BAM</a> from June 25. The Last Tree received the Best Screenplay Award from the Writers Guild of Great Britain and won two British Independent Film Awards: Most Promising Newcomer for Sam Adewunmi and Best Supporting Actress for Ruthxjiah Bellenea. Shola&#8217;s latest project, a VR experience called Violence, recently premiered at Cannes XR.

racism