IFFI-2008 - International Film Festival of India

COMPETITION
CINEMA OF THE WORLD
IFFI-2008
USA
Women Behind the Camera
2007, 35 mm, Colour, 95 mins, English
Director
Alexis Krasilovsky
Screenplay
Alexis Krasilovsky
Cinematography
Denise Bailie, Michelle Crenshaw, Kristin Glover, Mary
Gonzales, Mairi Gunn, Jendra Jarnagin, Stephanie Martin,
Hilda Mercado, Jakobine Motz, Yoshiko Osawa, LeRoy
Patton, Karin Pelloni, El H. Sambi Sarr, Eva Testor (AAC) and
others
Editor
Katey Bright
Music
Elizabeth Sellers
Sound
Steve Wohler
Production
Alexis Krasilovsky
Rafael Film
1607 Landa St, Los Angeles, CA
90026-2065 USA
T: 323.662-5746
Email: alexiskras@aol.com
www.alexiskrasilovsky.com
Festivals & Awards
San Francisco Women's Film Festival (Best Women in Cinema
Award, Tribute Award), Female Eye film festival (best
documentary), Spirit of Moondance - Los Angeles (best
documentary feature), Tiburon, Baltimore, Portland Women's
Film Festival, Flying Broom International Film Festival
(Ankara), San Francisco Women's Film Festival, Women's
International Film Festival (Florida), Dhaka
Who knew that only two per cent of cinematographers on the largest budget American
films were women? And what will the world of film be like when the vision of women
informs it in a fuller way? This made-by-women-for-women global documentary,
based upon Krasilovsky's book of the same name, connects globally, exploring the lives
of camerawomen in Canada, China, France, Germany, India, India, Iran, Mexico,
Russia, Senegal, and other countries in a way never seen before. For six years, the film's
makers followed the lives of over 50 camerawomen, from video journalists risking their
lives in war zones, to feature directors of photography, shooting buddies-with-guns
escaping in slow motion from total destruction on commercial sets… from secret films
by camerawomen of the Taliban beating Afghani women, to historic footage by China's
first camerawomen of Mao's travels through the Chinese countryside… from the
narrative of a Russian filmmaker who filmed the fall of the Soviet Union, whose choice
of career is told as a love story… to rural India, where subsistence-level women are
taught camerawork as a means of empowerment…to the glowing young Senegalese
camerawoman willing to climb onto a man's shoulders - literally - to get her subject,
Krasilovsky shows us a world of beauty, courage and technical skill. Indian
camerapersons featured in the film include Sabeena Gadihoke, Ashok Mehta, Leelaben
Paben, Priya Seth Rao, M Shanti and Vijayalakshmi.
After studying film history at Yale University, Alexis Krasilovsky embarked on a career
as an independent filmmaker and holographer. Krasilovsky was the first to include the
film techniques of zooming and dissolving in a motion picture hologram, Created and
Consumed by Light (1975). Her pro-choice hologram, Childbirth Dream, was exhibited
at the Georges Pompidou Center, Paris and other museums and festivals. She did an
MFA in Film/Video Graphics from California Institute of the Arts. As head of her own
production company, Krasilovsky has written, directed, produced and shot numerous
documentaries, video-poems and art films, including Beale Street, Exile, What Memphis
Needs, Blood, and End of the Art World. Krasilovsky is currently a professor in the
Department of Cinema and Television Arts at California State University, Northridge,
teaching film production, screenwriting and film studies and continuing to make her
own movies. She and her son live in Los Angeles.
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