When Nikki Corda founded the Nevada Women’s Film Festival in 2015, she had no idea she was creating a Las Vegas institution. A CSN film professor at the time, she was just looking for a student club project. “I noticed there was a disparity between how many women students we had at the time and male students,” Corda recalls.
She had also just seen Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s 2011 documentary Miss Representation, about that same disparity in the wider film industry, which was eye-opening for her, even as someone with experience working in Hollywood. “The documentary really changed my life, as I became aware of just how bad the situation was for women in film,” she says.
So, Corda decided that her club’s first project would be a local film festival for women, and she posted a call for submissions on FilmFreeway, a popular online film festival hub. Because she didn’t charge a fee to submit, she received approximately 700 submissions, far more than expected. “We had no idea that that was going to happen,” she says. “But what that told us was how many women there were out there who were really anxious to tell their stories. We just moved forward with that and said, yes, we are a real film festival, and never looked back.”
Now the Nevada Women’s Film Festival is celebrating its 10th edition with a five-day event at UNLV, and Corda has built up a support system of women in the local film community — including professors, filmmakers, and industry professionals — who help put on what has become the third longest-running film festival in Nevada.
“We are just the little engine that could,” says Nevada Film Office Deputy Director Danette Tull, who’s been involved since the festival’s first year. “We don’t have a celebrity spearheading this festival. It’s just us.”
Filmmaker and UNLV professor May May Luong has also been on the board since the beginning, and in 2017 she was chosen as the Nevada Women Filmmaker of the Year. “To be among the women that they’ve honored in the past and the ones that they’ve honored after — just to be a part of it is something I’ll remember forever,” she says.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary, this year’s festival will feature a Women of the Decade event, bringing together all past Nevada honorees, including this year’s Nevada Woman Filmmaker of the Year, Reno-based director Kari Barber. “What we’re looking for is somebody in the community who has been creating work that is really worth bringing attention to,” Corda says of the distinction’s criteria.
Other highlights of this year’s festival include the return of the Young Filmmakers’ Workshop, an initiative pairing professional mentors with high school students to create short films that are showcased at the festival. This year, Corda worked with board member Keely Dervin to hold a workshop at Canyon Springs High School, with Luong as one of the mentors. “Being able to foster the love of filmmaking in our younger generation, and to see their enthusiasm and their creativity come through while making their films, is just amazing,” Luong says.
Beyond NWFF, Corda also heads up the nonprofit organization Women in Film Nevada, which is planning regular film screenings throughout the year to supplement the festival, beginning this fall. It’s part of the group’s overall mission of bringing more attention to the festival and to the role of women in film.
“We’re very happy that 2023 was such a big year for women in film,” Corda says. “But we have to remain vigilant. There are still extreme inequities if you look at the statistics.”
“When it becomes less of a phenomenon that women have been nominated for an award or we stop looking at these statistics on how many women are involved in major films, that’s when we know that we’ve actually made real progress,” Luong adds.
NWFF is a key part of that progress, and Corda has big ambitions for its future. “In the next 10 years, Nevada Women’s Film Festival aspires to be the premier women’s film festival in the United States,” she says. “We want to be a major film festival in this country and an event that our community can be proud of.” If the past decade is any indication, she’s well on her way to that goal.
The Nevada Women’s Film Festival is scheduled June 19-23 in the Flora Dungan Humanities Building at UNLV. Tickets are $12-$17 per screening/panel, $30-$50 festival passes. More information is at nwffest.com.