AnAkA (she/they) is a film director, musician, and archivist who utilizes ancestral root work techniques. For ten years she has cultivated an ethnographic project entitled AKTIV8: an original archive created with the intention to document and strengthen the heartbeat of the global Indigenous movements, practices and rituals of our current time. AnAkA has directed and photographed stories for clients such as Nike, Vogue, State Farm and American Express. By directing films, creating Angel Music, curating AKTIV8 experiences, and co founding the Black Oregon Land Trust, AnAkA centers ancestral honorance and cultural memory.
AnAkA’s 2023 intentions is to elevate into the world of directing for feature film & TV; to perform the music off her new project #ANGELMUSICEP; and to release her upcoming 200-page photography book celebrating ten years of #AKTIV8Archive!
-
Carly is also the creator and writer of two comic book series for BOOM! Studios: Heavy Vinyl (nominated for a 2018 Prism award) and The Avant-Guards (nominated for a 2020 GLAAD Award). In 2017 Carly served as showrunner and director for the scripted horror/ comedy anthology series Threads, produced by New Form for Verizon’s go90 platform; in 2019 they directed four episodes of the interactive comedy series Wizard School Dropout for Eko.
Carly has spent years making short-form narrative and commercial content for clients and brands like Funny or Die, CollegeHumor, Amy Poehler's Smart Girls, World of Wonder, Paramount, Absolut Vodka, Hasbro, Smashbox, NYX Cosmetics, Google and YouTube. Most notably, they directed the third season of Awkwafina’s digital series Tawk, and their campaigns for RuPaul’s Drag Race have won a One Show Pencil and multiple Promax BDA Awards.
Carly is an alum of Universal’s Directors Initiative, AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, is a semi-finalist for the 2022 Commercial Directors Diversity Program and a member of the inaugural class of Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ artist-in-residence program, RESIDENCE. Recently they were selected as one of three filmmakers for Hello Sunshine’s branded “Meet Cute” series, writing and directing a queer romantic comedy called First Date. Currently they are developing several film and television projects.
