|
Shooting Women
Director: Alexis Krasilovsky, USA, 2008, 54 minutes
Canadian Premiere
Shooting Women features over fifty women cinematographers and directors from around the world. It was shot over a period of six years by pioneering filmmaker and cinema studies professor Alexis Krasilovsky. And it celebrates the amazing talent and unflinching spirit of image-making women, from the sets of Hollywood and Bollywood to the war zones of Afghanistan.
This internationally-acclaimed documentary, based on Krasilovsky’s book ‘Women Behind the Camera,’ broaches the persistent issues encountered by women in film. From the glass ceiling, sexual harassment, childcare for professional camerawomen around the globe, and working in environments where raising such issues is seen as ‘unprofessional.’
Seasoned film professionals tell incredible stories of working under intolerable conditions of harassment, intimidation, and sexual assault. Names of a few well-known men are dropped and some bitter truths are laid on the table. Krasilovsky’s ambitious endeavor paints a portrait of a historically male-dominated profession with progress still being made at a snail’s pace. While today some may view the film industry as progressive, the boys’ club reigns and women are an extremely small minority as cinematographers and directors.
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!), as well as Canadian cinematographers Zoe Dirse and Joan Hutton. The film also tells the story 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 and secretly filmed beatings of women in Afghanistan, to clips of horror, Hollywood, and experimental films, viewers get a glimpse of how women behind the camera are changing the world of filmmaking.
Alexis Krasilovsky’s films, videos and holograms include End of the Art World, starring Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg; Exile, filmed in Czechoslovakia before the fall of the Iron Curtain; Just Between Me & God, shown nationally on The Learning Channel’s series, The Independents; the hologram Childbirth Dream, exhibited in the Georges Pompidou Center (Paris); and the hologram Created and Consumed by Light, exhibited at the World Expo (Seoul), and the International Festival of Computer Graphics (Tokyo).
After studying film history at Yale University, she received an MFA in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts, and is currently Professor at California State University, Northridge, where she teaches film production, film studies and screenwriting.
Followed by a public forum: Underrepresented – Women Behind the Camera.
Community Partner
|
