Shooting Women
2008 | 54 minutes | Color | DVD | English | Subtitled | Order No. 09963
Featuring more than 50 camerawomen from around the world, SHOOTING WOMEN, by pioneering filmmaker and cinema studies professor Alexis Krasilovsky, celebrates the amazing talent and unflinching spirit of image-making women from the sets of Hollywood and Bollywood to the war zones of Afghanistan.
SYNOPSIS
This internationally-acclaimed documentary, based on Krasilovsky’s book Women Behind the Camera, broaches the persistent issues of the glass ceiling, sexual harassment, and childcare for professional camerawomen around the globe—working from environments where raising such issues is seen as “unprofessional.” Krasilovsky and Harriet Margolis have also co-authored the book, Shooting Women: Behind the Camera, Around the World with Julia Stein.
With wide-ranging access and rich diversity, SHOOTING WOMEN offers insight from top directors of photography like Ellen Kuras (ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND) and Sandi Sissel (SALAAM BOMBAY), while giving voice to stories of groundbreaking women like African-American Jessie Maple Patton, who sued the American union and networks for the right to work. From historic footage of Mao’s travels from China’s first camerawoman, to the secretly filmed beatings of women in Afghanistan, viewers are offered a glimpse of how women behind the camera are changing the world.
PRESS
“Powerful footage…. [A]n educational, political, and social tool..”
“Its scope is breathtaking and the women’s voices riveting…. Brings women cinematographers around the world clearly into view.”
“An important film for EVERYONE who collaborates on motion pictures and all who watch them.”
“Beautifully empowering! Inspiring, especially for the generation of youth who may be interested in pursuing cinematography as their future profession. Everyone should do themselves a favor by watching this!”
SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS
- San Francisco Women’s Film Festival, Best Women in Cinema Award & Tribute Award
- Female Eye Film Festival, Best Documentary Film
- Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Festival of Media Arts, Best Long Form Documentary
- Moondance Int’l Film Festival, Spirit of Moondance Award Best Documentary Feature
- WOW (Women of the World) Film Festival, Australia, Best International Documentary
- Tiburon Int’l Film Festival
- Filmmor Women's Film Festival, Istanbul, Turkey
- DOXA Documentary Film Festival
- WOW Film Festival, Sweden
- DOCNZ Forum
- Manaki Film Festival
- International Women's Film Festival, Israel
- Jeevika: Asia Livelihood Documentary Festival
- Lady Bug Film Festival
- Lady Filmmakers Festival
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
After studying film history at Yale University, Alexis Krasilovsky embarked on a career as an independent filmmaker and holographer. She later received an MFA in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts.
In addition to writing and directing the film, SHOOTING WOMEN, Alexis is the author of the book "Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling” (Routledge – 2nd Place Winner, 2019 International Writers’ Awards). Under the pseudonym Alexis Rafael, she wrote "Sex and the Cyborg Goddess,” a portrait of a filmmaker as a young woman facing sexual harassment – winner of the 2018 Irwin Award for Best #MeToo Novel of the Year. She is also co-author of the book, "Shooting Women: Behind the Camera, Around the World," by Harriet Margolis, Alexis Krasilovsky and Julia Stein (Intellect Press, UK; U Chicago Press, October 2015, available in paperback and eBook here and via Amazon).
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 and other museums and festivals here and abroad.
As head of her own production company – Rafael Film, LLC – Krasilovsky has written, directed and produced numerous documentaries, video-poems and art films, including END OF THE ART WORLD, EXILE, WHAT MEMPHIS NEEDS and BLOOD, reviewed in the Los Angeles Times as "in its stream-of-consciousness way, more powerful than Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver.’" Her global documentary feature, WOMEN BEHIND THE CAMERA, won five Best Documentary awards, as well as a Tribute Award for achievement in independent cinema from the San Francisco Women’s Film Festival and a lifetime achievement award from the Gdansk DocFilm Festival. Krasilovsky’s most recent film, THE PARKING LOT OF DREAMS (2021) addresses the isolation of the pandemic through poetry.
Meeting other filmmakers at festivals around the world that have screened her work compelled Krasilovsky to think transitionally and transculturally, exploring the perils and pleasures of pastry in PASTRIOLOGY (2013) and LET THEM EAT CAKE (2014) with the help of co-producers and unit producers from Bangladesh, France, India, Japan, Mexico, Peru, the Republic of Guinea, Turkey and other countries.
Alexis Krasilovsky is Professor in the Department of Cinema and Television Arts at California State University, Northridge, where she has taught film production, screenwriting and media theory and criticism.
Krasilovsky is a member of the Alliance of Women Directors, the International Documentary Association, GreenLight Women, Women in Film, and the Writers Guild of America. (09/21)
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