In Women Behind the Camera, Director Alexis Krasilovsky examines the lives of camerawomen around the world. Click here to learn more about Women Behind the Camera and to view clips of the movie.
Q:What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
A: I came up in the world during what became known as Second Wave Feminism, and I felt that filmmaking could give voice to the silenced part of myself as a young woman artist. I also needed to prove that I could master technology—things that were traditionally off-limits to girls growing up. I loved the idea of being a pioneer. I wanted my ideas to be taken seriously: with a background in theater, dance, literature, music, and painting, film was the only contemporary art form that could validate the art forms that I loved, all at once.
Q: This documentary followed the lives of a diverse group of filmmakers from around the world; we see video journalists who risk their lives in war-torn countries to commercial DPs on Hollywood sets, yet many face similar issues. Did you pursue this film as a means to show the commonalities camerawomen from around the globe actually share or was this accidental?
A: Once I recognized that often camerawomen were using similar visual approaches to war, whether shooting narrative films about war in Brazil or Kurdistani Iraq, or shooting people surviving actual wars in Kosovo, I began to look for these commonalities. The relationships between camerawomen who are often isolated from other camerawomen become relationships between their visual styles. There’s also a commonality of issues such as balancing motherhood and film careers that many camerawomen have faced whether in Hollywood or Bollywood, although the solutions are sometimes very different.
But I was just as interested in exploring camerawomen’s unique visions. For example, Byun Young Joo talks about Korean women filmmakers creating a feminist lexicon that’s different from that of Agnes Varda and other women filmmakers in the West. And Sandi Sissel, ASC, is often hired for her unique style in shooting action film sequences that don’t have much in common with delicate, ballet-like movement or attention to small details that some might label as a common female aesthetic. In fact, Sandi Sissel, like several of the other camerawomen we interviewed, has worked both in war-zones and on Hollywood sets.
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