Strike Anywhere, a production company with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco, has added director Katya Bankowsky to its roster for commercials and branded content in the U.S. This marks the first production house roost for Bankowsky, a former agency executive producer and director, having last been at mcgarrybowen.
Bankowsky is a California native who became a New Yorker upon graduating from Yale. After college, she took a production job in advertising, which served as her film school and where she learned the art of the 30-second movie. Bankowsky soon went freelance and began shooting her feature documentary Shadow Boxers, which chronicles the emergence of women in boxing and the stellar rise of the first undefeated world champion Lucia Rijker. Bankowsky directed, edited and produced the film, and also boxed in the first NYC Golden Gloves to allow female competitors. Shadow Boxers premiered at the Toronto and Berlin International Film Festivals, picking up awards on the festival circuit before obtaining worldwide distribution.
Bankowsky’s non-documentary work includes TV commercials, branded entertainment, and digital campaigns for clients including Reebok, NFL, WNBA, Verizon, the US Olympic Committee, Chase, and Brazilian Brahma beer. She has worked with Maya Angelou, 50 Cent, Jay-Z, and numerous top-tier athletes. Bankowsky recently directed a piece for The New York Times on French fashion icon Michele Lamy, which kicked off a web series she writes, directs and co-stars in alongside Lamy.
Bankowsky’s directorial style is visual and musically driven. Her understanding of how to communicate a brand message can be attributed to her years as an in-house EP/director at Amster Yard and mcgarrybowen. This point of view can be seen in the social media campaign she directed for the NFL this past summer, a series called The Handoff.
On joining Strike Anywhere, Bankowsky says she is happy to add her creative point of view to their roster. “I want to help Strike Anywhere dig into a broader range of projects outside of traditional content. Tapping back into my agency experience, we can offer so much to both clients and agencies by extending that collaborative thinking. We all know the ad-world model is being transformed and we all want to figure out what interesting opportunities can come from the changes in the industry.”
Bankowsky said there was an instant connection with Strike Anywhere EP Cori Cooperider. “I felt her laid back positive energy and enthusiasm immediately. I liked that Cori was also interested in the quirky web series I’m doing with Michele Lamy in addition to my commercial work. This showed me Cori is someone who sees that the future of advertising is the intersection of art and commerce, something that continues to evolve every year.”
Strike Anywhere has a sales team consisting of Devine Reps for the West Coast, KK & Joanna in the Midwest, and Mr. Bartlett on the East Coast.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More