Armond Kinard, born in Los Angeles, is an actor, writer and poet. He has been steadily working his way to artistic success since 2007, although his passion for creativity goes back to childhood.
His first passion was acting, but that was immediately followed by writing during the first 12 years of his life. By 1996, at age 20, another interest spawned - his love of poetry. Hip hop and/or Rap music heavily influenced this new passion. While attending Los Angeles Trade Technical Community College, he began writing poetry. It was during this time that he wrote notes for many of his present film ideas. He'll always claim 1996 as the best year of his adult life due to all of this creativity firing up.
In 1999, Armond's stride experienced a detour, after being hired at Power 106.FM, a popular hip hop radio station in Los Angeles. It was this radio station that triggered his love of the music, especially in the 90's. He worked in the promotions department until January of 2007.
After leaving Power 106, he did some stand up comedy at the World Famous Comedy Store in Hollywood (his poem "Homeless Intellectuals" was created from those routines). He also co-starred in a film titled "Color of the Cross part 2 : The Resurrection", where he played "Simon" (his first speaking role).
By June of 2009, Armond created a YouTube account and started using it to generate attention to his poetry and voiceover talents, with very little success. Then, thanks to motivation from his cousin Jonathan Picos and a colleague, Mike Sonksen, Armond began performing his poetry on stage for the first time (November 2010). In 2011, his poetry started to catch on in Los Angeles with performances in Hollywood, Watts, Santa Monica, Downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights. People were taking notice and enjoying his performances.
In January of 2012, he performed in a major Los Angeles poetry event, "Occupy This", which led to him being cast in a theatre production, "Occupy the Heart", produced by Miguel Garcia and Josefina Lopez. He also co-wrote a short film, "And Let God Do the Rest", which finished production in March of that year. Armond was also featured in a web series titled, "Failing Upwards", produced by Matt Crabtree and Michelle Bonilla. He later created a sensual poetry series titled, "The Book of Sultry".
In 2014, he would join a writers group, which would connect him to new film director, Armin Siljkovic. Together they would work on three projects from 2015 to 2017, with one of them earning Armond his first best actor nomination for a short film titled, "Hard Money". Today, he continues to work with Armin on short films and features. He plans to focus more on film writing and acting, while still maintaining his love of writing or performing poetry. His sensual poetry series "The Book of Sultry" is developing a growing international fan base on Vimeo.
Links:
imdb.com/name/nm2918887/
youtube.com/channel/UCIGPdDLkIDYeXujrTCtRvEw
