Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anna Koukouli Born. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Anna, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I’ve had my fair share of meaningless career advancement in my past. I was swallowed by my corporate life, and although I wanted to believe that a career in advertising can give me creative satisfaction, it’d been a black hole that was swallowing my soul piece by piece.
My therapist said that I won’t feel balanced unless I find meaning in what I do, but then what was this? What’s the meaning I was/am looking for? We were going back and forth with ideas about “meaningful work”, ideas were thrown around “Why don’t you work for a non-profit” for example, which instead of inspiring me, kind of agitated me… I remember answering her like “so that I can see the said non-profit CEO parking his Maserati in the underground parking?”. She shook her head like she understood.
The truth is, everyone of us is seeking meaning, and wants to be involved in projects that makes them feel better about aiding the world around them and themselves.
After all of this, I have concluded that meaning is very personal. I have come to find meaning in filmmaking, expressing my views and fighting for causes that I care deeply about, which comprise of every day issues like women at the workplace, psychological stressors from growing up in dysfunctional families, addiction and mental health. Having a point of view on those issues and expressing it through my stories as a writer and as a director is healing my soul and reignites my faith in finding meaning in what I do.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Sure. I was born and raised in Athens, Greece. From an early age, I was drawn into photography and the visual arts, and developed a love for film very early on. I adored watching films that I was not allowed for my age, renting VHSs secretly and just thinking about the stories for days. The only time when I was allowed to stay up all night was the Oscars’ night, as the time difference sets the ceremony at 3:00am Greek time!!!
Anyway, when time came to decide what I’d study in college I was very very indecisive and confused, wanting to follow photography and directing… maybe? That’s when my parents decided to intervene with their opinion, which was I should definitely not ignore my artistic itches but I should get to study something more… employable. This fear of arts not being a sustainable profession was instilled in me ever since. I mean, they had a point.
In any case, I moved from Athens to the United Kingdom. I graduated from University of Humberside & Lincolnshire (now known as University of Lincoln) with a BA (Hons) Marketing and from University of Liverpool with an MBA. My time in England was very formative and a pivotal point in my life. I was making friendships with people from all over the world, I traveled around Europe, I got the bug for cultural exploration. And I started writing about it. I also found a way to combine my business training with my creative thirst – I got obsessed with advertising and creative expression of brands.
I spent 13 years in advertising. The real Mad Men stuff of the 2000s, with everything exciting and everything bad it entailed. The stress, the sleepless nights, but also the traveling, the awards. Life is a mix of experiences and my advertising life was no exception. But as with all endless rollercoaster professional pace, I ended up with a big fat burnout around 2014.
This was a pivotal moment for me. It was the time to seek meaning from my work, find a way to get myself aligned with my inner voice. I needed to tell visual stories. This is what I’ve always wanted. With this and that and mainly with the support and encouragement of my spouse we planned out a big move and we landed in Los Angeles, so that I can reset my whole life and get down with learning, experimenting, finding my tribe, take writing and directing classes.
Now I’m a screenwriter seeking to sell my feature films or get staffed on a show, I get writing assignments from producers, I have a dramedy in the making with Actor/Producer/Director Ken Gregory and I’m shooting my short films for my reel.
I also do professional script reading for people, giving notes and helping them with their ideas and script development, making custom consulting packages depending on their needs.
My aim is and will always be to get enough recognition and traction for my writing and directing and land on shooting feature films in the drama, dark comedy and dystopian genres. I’m mostly intrigued and passionate about dysfunctional human relationships and the dark hour of the soul. I also write dystopia, using her climate change anxiety as fuel for stories about our bleak future and the tech dominance on humanity. I’m also utterly obsessed with women rights and gender parity. My first short film APPRAISAL has been about women at the workplace and the internalized hesitation to claim what is right for our careers. You can watch it here: https://vimeo.com/716698839?share=copy
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
When I was privately screening my first short APPRAISAL, I was showing it to working mothers in male dominated environment, which who the protagonist portrays. 100% of the times I got the reply: “I just saw my life in 8 mins.”, “this is the truth and it’s told so poignantly” “this is so painful to watch, because this is the truth”.
Then I was showing it to male friends, their reaction was always: “omg, it makes you think hard about your own behavior at work.”
When people read or watch my work and they connect with the truth in it, when they relate and they think about the message of the work, this is when I feel fulfilled and rewarded of a job well done.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
I come from the world of business, which has assigned $$ value on time and produced work and I understand the need of transforming creative output into monetized results and ROI explanations, blah blah blah…. fine. I get it. But just because I get it, I don’t think it’s the right way to go when it comes to art.
Reality is that the creative process takes time, production takes time and lots of money and the actual resources for creatives via grants, creative labs, non-profit funding are a very very competitive playground. And the societal cultural shift to be made is accepting that art has value and it includes the brain and soul work of an artist that cannot be immediately monetized.
There’s a world where the state does not cut budgets for the arts, that co productions with several countries and organizations is a norm and not everyone needs to spend any cent they own to prove they’re serious about their art.
I come from Europe, I worked most of my professional life in Germany and worked with people from around the world. There is another way. Just look at the credits from European films. There’s so much support from the state, from ministries of culture, from artistic organizations and they work in collaboration to bring great work to the world. I went to a screening for a Swedish film and the Iranian-Swedish director said: “Oh, in Sweden and the Nordics funding is much easier” and his words pierced my soul.
My dream would be to be able to say these words for the USA one day… and see people’s creativity burst and flourish without going broke in the process.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @annakoukouliborn
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/koukoulianna/
- Twitter: @akoukouli
Image Credits
anna koukouli