Directed by Alexis Krasilovsky
2007, 90 minutes
Distributed by From the Heart Productions
Check out praise for Women Behind the Camera and upcoming screenings near you.
About the Film
Who knew that only 4% 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 documentary, based upon Krasilovsky’s book of the same name, connects globally, exploring the lives of camerawomen in Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Mexico, Russia, Senegal, and other countries in a way never seen before.
American camerawomen shown include top Directors of Photography like Ellen Kuras, ASC (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Amy Vincent, ASC, Black Snake Moan) and top pioneers like African-American camerawoman Jessie Maple Patton—who had to sue the union and television networks to get jobs.
From the secret films by camerawomen of Taliban beating Afghani women, to historic footage by China’s first camerawomen of Mao’s travels through the Chinese countryside… From the playful narrative of a Russian filmmaker who learned the art from her father, her choice of career 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, Professor Krasilovsky shows us a world of beauty, courage and technical skill.
About the Producer/Director
Alexis Krasilovsky is writer/director/producer of the global feature documentary, Women Behind the Camera, which recently won the Accolade Competition’s Award for Excellence for Contemporary Issues/Awareness-Raising and the Insight Award for Excellence for Documentary Editing. The film is based on her book, also titled Women Behind the Camera (Praeger 1997). Other films and videos written and directed by Alexis Krasilovsky include What Memphis Needs, Exile, Blood, and End of the Art World, which Artforum praised for its “quality of humor possible only with depth of understanding.” Her films have aired nationally on PBS and The Learning Channel and screened in museums and festivals here and abroad, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Viennale.
