Corda takes her best shot at promoting women in filmmaking

Vegas Voices is a weekly question-and-answer series featuring notable Las Vegans.

Just in time for Women’s History Month, the Nevada Women’s Film Festival returns for its second year to acknowledge women who write, produce and direct films as well as movies with strong female characters.

The festival is the vision of Nikki Corda, a Las Vegas native who has worked in the movie industry for more than a decade, spending most of her career in the development side reading a lot of scripts.

After living and working in Los Angeles, Corda decided to move back to Las Vegas 10 years ago and began teaching film classes at the College of Southern Nevada; she plans to start teaching documentary film classes at Nevada State College in the fall.

During her time at CSN, she noticed the program didn’t have as many female students as it did males. Trying to promote diversity in the industry, she and a few other local professors, including filmmaker Brett Levner, started a Women’s Film Collective.

From there, the club developed into the Nevada Women’s Film Festival, which is set to return Friday through Sunday at the Springs Preserve.

For this year’s festival, Corda whittled nearly 200 submissions down to the 40 entries that will be screened. To be considered, entries must include women as directors, producers or writers or feature strong female characters. Corda says she has worked hard to make sure those works, which range from documentaries to feature films, reflect diversity as well.

We recently talked with her about the festival and about living in Las Vegas.

Review-Journal: What makes Las Vegas unique?

Corda: That is such a great question. I have lived in other cities like New York City. I went to college in Boston. I’ve lived in Los Angeles. I think what is unique is when you tell people who aren’t from (Las Vegas) that you live here — whether you’re traveling to another place or you tell a tourist — people look at you funny when you say you’re from Vegas. People can’t believe you actually live here. I think it’s because there is a misconception that there is only the Strip or they expect it’s what they see in “The Hangover.” People hear Vegas, and they have an image of strip clubs. People don’t realize we have culture or an art community.

R-J: People always argue about whether we have culture. What are your thoughts?

Corda: I can tell you we do have culture. My boyfriend is a musician in town and a bass player full time in the Las Vegas Philharmonic, so I get treated to many wonderful concerts at The Smith Center. There is also the Henderson Symphony Orchestra, a thriving arts district, First Friday and a growing film community. There are a lot of filmmakers in the community.

The film community is different than in L.A. It’s smaller but has an entrepreneurial spirit here that’s different than L.A. I think in L.A, you tend to get lost in the crowd since it’s bigger.

R-J: How has the film community evolved in Las Vegas over the years?

Corda: I’ve only been present in the film community for 10 years, but I’ve seen it grow. People are getting more connected.

We have groups for women in filmmaking such as the Nevada Women’s Film Collective along with other groups for local filmmakers.

R-J: What type of talent pool is there in Las Vegas?

Corda: I think Las Vegas in general is a wonderfully creative city. Between all the people who perform on the Strip, we have so many great musicians, dancers and even magicians.

Las Vegas also has a great talent pool of actors and writers along with loads of people who can shoot and edit. I think we are just as good as other cities.

R-J: There have been many conversations about diversity in the film industry, one aspect is women having more access to roles behind the camera. How difficult is it for women to get jobs as directors?

Corda: I think it’s just as tough as it sounds. I’ve read some pretty shocking statistics about it. One thing I watched that woke me up about it — when I was younger I wasn’t really aware of how bad it was — was the film “Miss Representation.”

There is a lot of statistics in there about how few female directors and writers there are for feature films.

I think it’s because we have a lot of men in power making these decisions and don’t realize.

It’s the same with the lack of racial diversity. I think another problem we are seeing is terrible ageism. There is a very troubling and unrealistic expectation.

We need this all to stop.

R-J: How does having events like the film festival help?

Corda: I think the festival is giving women a chance to be seen and heard. We have a chance to pick films that better reflect diversity in the industry.

I think having a film festival in general in our city and community not only helps with diversity but brings in culture in general.

Contact reporter Michael Lyle at mlyle@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5201. Follow @mjlyle on Twitter.