Michael J. Epstein  Michael J. Epstein (born 1976), is an American filmmaker, musician, writer, and auditory scientist. Epstein has also spoken and written about the impact of local media on the arts, music service gatekeeping, effective social networking, and crowdfunding. Epstein was born in Smithtown, New York. His father is author Lawrence J. Epstein. Epstein grew up in Stony Brook, New York. and was raised Jewish. Epstein comes from a technical background, but shifted toward creative work, saying he, "was building electronics projects and writing adventure games on my VIC-20 in gradeschool... [and] started seeing a lot of commonality between all of this creative work and my more formal training in electrical engineering as my creative skills advanced." Epstein received a BS in electrical engineering from Binghamton University and a PhD in electrical and computer engineering in 2004 from Northeastern University and joined the audiology faculty there in 2005. Epstein became a tenured professor at the university, studying psychoacoustics, loudness, auditory electrophysiology, and sound design before leaving Boston in 2016 to pursue full-time filmmaking. Epstein, in collaboration with his wife, Sophia Cacciola, has directed four feature films: "TEN," "Magnetic", "Blood of the Tribades" and "Clickbait". The pair are focused on creating sociopolitical genre films. Their film "Clickbait" started playing at festivals in 2018. Epstein describes his process for creating films as thematic. Discussing his first feature "TEN", he noted, "We really wanted to expand typical characterization themes of using shortcuts and stereotypes to touch on the broader narrative of the film. Because the film is about the arbitrary meaninglessness of identity, we wanted to recontextualize the film itself repeatedly by shifting tone and genre." Michael Gingold of Fangoria described TEN saying, "it veers off in directions you likely won't see coming, both in narrative terms and in the way it explores questions of female identity.” Lauren Shiro of "Curve" wrote, "the movie takes on a political and sociological stance, examining stereotypes, identity, and also the subtext and themes behind story lines." Epstein has directed Artsploitation's "A Taste of Phobia", Troma's "Grindsploitation", and the "60 Seconds to Die" series. Epstein has collaborated with monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner, Izzy Lee, Ungovernable Films, Troma, and Tanya Pearson of the Women of Rock Oral History Project.