My first movie premiered at NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center. Honestly, making that movie was such a stretch for me. I literally got on the job training as a writer, director, editor and one of the stars of the movie. For me, it pushed me to go beyond what I thought I could do and showed me that I am are more than what meets the eye.
I don’t necessarily have a large concern for the future. The way my brain works (always in the future), I try to keep myself in the now. We can try to plan but God and life always have a way of letting you know who’s really in control. So, I guess my biggest concern would be “Akilah remain in the present and let the future handle itself.”
A defining moment in my life was when I published my first monologue book for actors. Up until that point, I felt like I wasn’t doing enough in my career path. As if to say, I was still searching for my place in the industry. Once I finished my first book, it turned into 3, which turned into a monologue showcase, a play, a movie and now a series. I believe that every piece of art that was embedded in me finally began to take shape. They’re now sold on Amazon.
Well, I’ve been in the industry in some shape or form throughout my life. I’ve been a makeup artist since 2008, trained as a dancer for a good portion of my life and did some acting. You can say that being an entertainer was always a part of me.
I’m not very active on social media, but I do use facebook (https://www.facebook.com/giulia.corda.378/) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/giugliett500/). I am really proud of the project I’m currently working on. With a dear friend of mine, a visionary and eclectic writer/director named Federica Cellini, I’m adapting a short story into a feature film. The story was written by a writer we deeply admire, Jhumpa Lahiri (a Pulitzer prize winning author), and is called The Boundary. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/29/the-boundary) It is an adaption and also expansion process, which so far has been challenging and inspiring at the same time. I look forward to getting to the screenwriting phase, the one that I enjoy the most.
When I was a kid I was very proud of my collection of erasers. They were purely ornamental and didn’t actually erase anything. My favorite pieces, and I don’t know what’s the symbolism behind that, were a washer machine and a green payphone. I’m not a meticulous collector as I used to be, but I like keeping quirky buttons. I have a few favorites: one with Chunk from “The Goonies”; another that just says “Introvert”, and my favorite, a black one with “I have made a huge mistake” written in white. I guess it makes fun of my perfectionism, and that’s why I like it so much.
In the Italian cinema industry there is a way of saying about the “message” of a film – “The postman carries the messages”. It exemplifies our disenchanted way of looking at life, and movies as well. A film is not supposed to preach or give life lessons, but needs to be compelling and entertaining. I feel the same way about advice, who am I to give any? I leave it to the professionals – therapists, priests… I can say one thing though, and it’s mostly to myself, though I assume other women filmmakers might struggle with the same issue. I believe that letting perfectionism stand in the way is a capital sin. It’s important to always make new projects. Shying away from your own work and not finishing it because it might not be good enough is a defeat in itself, thus I look forward to putting more imperfect projects out into the world.
In Italian we have a term, “tormentone” – one-hit-wonder. We use it for a big Summer hit, a song, usually a dance one, that everybody sings. This type of song is so popular that it starts “tormenting” you, hence the name. Singers tend to get only one of those, and then it’s hard to repeat the same success. My tormentone is Venus Transit, my thesis script that was awarded a Sloan Filmmaker Fund Grant from the Tribeca Film Institute. Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal made the announcement – the most exciting moment in my career. This happened right after getting a Sloan grant also from my alma mater, USC. At Tribeca I won alongside The Imitation Game, which ended up earning an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. I hope I will get even just an ounce of that movie’s success, but at the same time, who knows? Maybe Venus Transit is just a catchy song and the real tormentone is still yet to come, or even better, I will have many films/tv series that I will be proud of.
Presently, TV is the most exciting medium for a writer, but I’m a cinephile at heart and I’m worried about the future of the theater experience. I have a dear producer friend in Italy who constantly warns me that cinema is dead, and I always shiver when she says that. The multiple streaming platforms were already challenging traditional cinema, but I really hope that the pandemic won’t give it the final blow.
It’s not easy looking at yourself from the outside, but I can try. I see my coming to America mission as the turning point of my life. I wasn’t happy with my career, and thanks to hard work and difficult decisions I was able to get unstuck and start a new chapter. I won a Fulbright scholarship, passed the GRE, and above all, got on a plane nine years after taking the last one and developing a major fear of flying. Thanks to the Fulbright, I have also had the opportunity to attend a pre-academic program in Monterey where I met 40 students from all over the world – to this day, the most exciting experience of my life. I’m grateful to that original moment of frustration because it generated a ripple effect that made my life more stimulating and vibrant.