Alexis Krasilovsky

Alexis Krasilovsky
Born

1950 (age 65–66)

Nationality American
Occupation Filmmaker, writer, professor

Alexis Krasilovsky (born 1950) is an American filmmaker, writer and professor. Krasilovsky's first film, End of the Art World documented artists including Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg.

Krasilovsky moved from New York to Los Angeles in the 1970s to pursue her passion for filmmaking, writing and directing films through her company, Rafael Film. She is the writer and director of the global documentary features, Women Behind the Camera and Let Them Eat Cake (Pastriology.com) (currently in production).

Krasilovsky, born 1950 in Juneau, Alaska, is the daughter of children's book author Phyllis Krasilovsky and entertainment attorney William Krasilovsky. She grew up in Chappaqua, New York, in a home that was previously lived in by the editor of the famous novelists Thomas Wolfe and Richard Wright, who became two of her favorite writers. After studying at Smith College and the University of Florence in Italy, she graduated with honors from Yale University and received her MFA in Film/Video from the California Institute of the Arts.

Career

Alexis Krasilovsky has received multiple awards and accolades that span the globe for her works as a female filmmaker. She is the recipient of a lifetime achievement award, "The Special Award of the Festival THE GATE OF FREEDOM" from the 2011 Gdansk DocFilm Festival and the 2008 Tribute Award from the San Francisco Women's Film Festival "for achievements in independent film." Her film Women Behind the Camera won Best Documentary awards at the Female Eye Film Festival (Toronto, Canada); the Moondance Film Festival (Universal City, California); and the W.I.N. (Women's Image Network) Film Festival (Hollywood). Krasilovsky's Shooting Women won the Best International Documentary Award at the Women of the World (WOW) Film Festival (Sydney, Australia). She won the "Best of the Fest" Literary Award at the 2008 Austin Woman's Film, Music and Literary Festival for Some Women Writers Kill Themselves (a DVD collection of several videopoems and poetry chapbooks).

Krasilovsky's work has earned the support of several other artists including Barbra Streisand who has said of Krasilovsky's documentary Exile "Such films do more than increase East-West understanding and reduce tensions; they also serve to emphasize that we are all essentially one people, which may be the best hope for our world.”

Alexis Krasilovsky's documentaries often address controversial topics. Beale Street follows the last march of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.

One of Krasilovsky's best-known films is Let Them Eat Cake, a global documentary feature contrasting the role of pastry in the world from those who overindulge, to people in Third World countries who have never consumed a pastry. The film documents the ingredients, creation of pastry, and the effects that pastry has—including obesity and diabetes—in several countries including Bangladesh, France, India, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Somalia, Turkey and the United States. The film has screened worldwide at several festivals, and features music from artists like Jenny Eloise Rieu, Ed Finney, Yasumi Miyazawa and Minoti Vaishnav.

Krasilovsky is also the author of Women Behind the Camera: Conversations with Camerawomen and several articles that have appeared in Creative Screenwriting. She has also contributed chapters to the books The Search for Reality: The Art of Documentary Filmmaking (ed. Michael Tobias, Michael Wiese Productions, 1998) and Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (ed. Carol Smallwood, McFarland, January 2012).

Krasilovsky is a member of the Writers Guild of America West. She is also a member of the Association of Women Directors, the International Documentary Association and Women in Film.

Personal life

Alexis Krasilovsky lives in Los Angeles and is a Professor in the Department of Cinema and Television Arts at California State University, Northridge, teaching screenwriting and film studies. She is currently completing a novel, as well as co-editing the book-length manuscript, Shooting Women: Behind the Camera and Changing the World."

Filmography

Awards

Books

Women Behind the Camera: Conversations with Camerawomen Praeger: Westport, Connecticut, 1997. Published by www.greenwood.com.

Some Women Writers Kill Themselves and Other Poems A Street Agency Publication: Los Angeles, 1983, 1985.

References

i. Thomas, Kevin. “Feminist Films at the Vanguard,” Los Angeles Times, 24 February 1976, p. 9. “With ferocious wit, Ms. Krasilovsky sends up New York’s art scene in ‘End of the Art World’ (1971). In essence, Ms. Krasilovsky uses the sounds and images of the usual art documentary to create her own work of art. In the process—or reprocess—she satirizes the fatuity of the standard interview with the artist and by the end identifies art with revolution as she fantasizes the quite literal obliteration of the Metropolitan Museums’ 20th-century art curator, Henry Geldzahler.”

ii. Sanchez, Sergio. “Cal State Northridge Professor Wins ‘The Gate of Freedom’ Award at Festival. http://blogs.csun.edu/news/2011/05/gate-of-freedom/. 24 May 2011. Accessed 26 November 2011.

iii. “WIF Member Alexis Krasilovsky Wins Best International Documentary Award” 1 Nov 2008. http://wif.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=390:kRASILOVSKY%20WINS. Accessed 25 November 2011.

iv. Abir, Rahad, “Book Review: Women Behind the Camera” (in Bangla), Daily Destiny, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2 January 2009. Accessed 25 November 2011.

v. Thomas, G. Murray, “Reviews: ‘The Earthquake Haggadah’; ‘What Memphis Needs,’” Next: Guide to So Cal Poets, Vol.2 No.8, Oct. 1995, p.18.

vi. Walston, Joan. “’Exile’: A Jewish Filmmaker’s Journey of Self-Discovery,” The Jewish Journal. 3–9 Oct. 1986, pp.17,21. “Watching it, we can realize how at times we have felt both blessed and cursed by the fate that caused our parents and grandparents to leave their homelands and settle in America, the fate which enables most of us to be alive today.” p. 21.

vii. Elrod, Nickii. “Riverside Finds Filmmaker Advocate,” The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, 16 Dec 1977, p. 26. “The heavies of the film will be chemical plant smokestacks, beer cans and the dump fires that send animals, and often the residents, scurrying for safety.” p. 26

viii. Hortig, Michael. “New DVD Mose Vinson,” http://weeniecampbell.com/yabbse/index.php?topic=5670.msg45800#msg45800, May 28, 2009. Accessed November 26, 2011. “…a new DVD about the life of barrelhouse pianist Mose Vinson from Memphis, filmed in the late 70s when Vinson was at his peak...”

ix. Thomas, Kevin. op.cit., p. 9. “In its stream-of-consciousness way ‘Blood’ (1975), evokes Manhattan street life even more powerfully than Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ (to be released Wednesday at selected theaters).

Sources

External links

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