We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Max Leonida. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Max below.
Max, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Being an artist, a creative mind… it’s already a pretty risky thing in itself…
Somehow we feel there are more “stable” and “secure” jobs in the world and we are afraid that pursuing a career in the entertainment business could eventually lead us to a path of starvation, compromises, miserable temporary gigs to make ends meet, etc.
That is partially true, but there’s another side to whole, entire story!
As I always mention to my students, at the University where I teach, every profession is important… but being an artist, or a storyteller is one of the most pivotal and critical one.
Why?
Because when my beloved cousin Aldo passed away, back in 1998 at the age of 24, due to a horrible pancreatic cancer I vividly remember that the last things he was asking me to do – when I was visiting him in the hospital – were to read a comic book or watch a movie together…
We shouldn’t forget how important is to be a creator of worlds, whether if it’s on a theatre stage, on the screen of a cinema, in an art gallery or in a book…
When medicine fails, when psychology doesn’t have any more answers, when money and finance can’t buy any more time, when faith seems a long and distant hope… we can still have the warm, embracing feeling of something that can make us forget our mundane and fragile human condition: a movie, a book, a song, a painting!
So, to get back to the initial topic of taking risks: yes, being an artist is risky, but it’s the most rewarding risk we could ever take in our lives.
Max, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I fell in love at a very young age with movies, and I remember myself filming my poor condescending friends – with an old Super 8 camera at the age of 10 – while I was trying to make my own self-produced, crappy, homemade horror, catastrophic or sci-fi films…!
After the high school graduation I studied Literature and Philosophy at the Catholic University of Milan, attending at the same time the prestigious Accademia de’ Filodrammatici of Milan, to learn acting and directing.
In 1992 I founded my first theater company “La Compagnia dei 13” and in 1994 I created my second company “Compagnia Teatro del Sacro” touring with my theater show “KOLBE” (inspired to the life and martyrdom of Father Maximilian Kolbe).
Since then I founded, with my wifey Paola Cipollina, first the multidisciplinary performing art school “Accademia dello Spettacolo” and the I bought an industrial building in the center of Milan (Italy) where I gave life to my own theater space “Teatro Estremo”.
On November 2003 I founded, together with my wife Paola, the video production company Astarox Srl with which I developed and created original European TV formats, media contents and feature films such as “Mandala – the symbol” [ITA 2008] and “Backward” [ITA/USA 2009].
In 2010 I moved with my family to Los Angeles, where I directed multiple internationally awarded films such as Beauty in the Broken [USA] 2013, Memento Mori [USA] 2014, A Very Lovely Dress [USA] 2016) together with some popular mainstream TV series (“Snaparazzi” – Sony Pictures, “Fai da Te Facile” – SKY) plus countless amongst international commercials, music videos and documentaries.
I participated and have been awarded at various international Festivals (Sundance Selections 2008, Cannes Marché du Film 2010, Salerno Film Festival 2010, Columbia Gorge International Film Festival 2014, LA Shorts Awards 2016). And I’ve been head of the jury of several international contests and festivals (Big City Life 2007, 48 Film Project 2013, Umbria in Sugar Land 2017).
I currently have the academic role of “Film Artist-in-Residence” at the Filmmaking and Storytelling Department of the prestigious William Penn University (IA). I also own – together with my lovely wifey (and extraordinary producer) Paola Cipollina – the company Astarox Productions, LLC: a Film & TV development corporation that has started a competitive, smart and revolutionary filming policy based on attractive incentives, easy-to-obtain film permits, thorough location scouting, rich production directory and a dedicated professional film and artistic community.
The production facility I am managing is worth 15 million dollars and I have five new movie projects in the can, to be realized between now and the end of 2025.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Talking about taking risks… there’s been a moment, when I was living in Los Angeles, where I second guessed my own career choices, and I started to think that maybe it would have been better – for me – to stay in Italy, where I had my established business, my family, my friends, and a certified yearly income of at least 1.3 million Euros…
Hollywood is absolutely not as cool as they usually “advertise” it in movies and TV shows, and the sad downfall the entire entertainment industry is having now in that place is just a sign of the time, something I felt it was meant to happen a long ago.
The entire hyper-competitive, overpriced, cut-throat, all commercial and only profit-based system is collapsing under the weight of its own shallowness: things are simply not sustainable anymore in Hollywood… But I don’t complain about that, because I knew I was going into the most competitive arena when I moved to LA: so, talking about resilience, I kept on fighting the good fight any given day.
It’s the nature of the beast: sometime you win the match and you feel on top of the world and sometime you feel defeated and it’s hard to rise and stand up again, after your soul is beaten up and covered in bruises. Unfortunately I’ve seen so many celebrities, who were revered and worshipped a few years ago, being totally forgotten and left penniless, with a broken career and only shattered dreams to hold on…
That’s why – at one point – I was concerned about the goodness of my professional choice…
But miracles happen, and I had a call from Iowa…
Since then I had no doubt whatsoever about how the risk I took was worth the struggle!
That’s the story of my resilience.
And, of course, I couldn’t have done nothing of that without the life-saving presence of my wife Paola and my daughter Elisa.
If I am here, alive, it’s because they never stopped believing in me.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding thing of my job as an artist is the miraculous connection you can create with people you never met, who live in places you’ve never been…!
Art can touch everybody’s heart, in any corner of the world, and when a movie or a song are truly universal, they overcome the boundaries of language, culture, geography and politic… to become a world’s heritage.
There’s nothing like that, because it makes you truly realize how the life on our planet (and happiness itself) is based on a sincere interconnection.
Peter Gabriel wrote a wonderful song titled “I/O” (as in Input/Output), and the chorus brilliantly says: “I’ve got stuff coming out, stuff going in, I’m just a part of everything. Stuff coming out, stuff going in
, I’m just a part of everything”…
All the art we create is truly nothing more than a gift, a signal, a form of energy from outside that we process through our very self: that’s why we should always give it back, enriched, to the ones around us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.maxleonida.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/max_leonida
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaxLeonidaDirector
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxleonida/en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@maxleonida336
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/maxleonida
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3209529
https://www.astaroxproductions.com
https://www.stage32.com/maxleonida
https://kdsm17.com/news/local/hollywood-director-moves-to-oskaloosa-to-teach-william-penn-university-film-students
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New Reporter Press Agency