Alexis Krasilovsky
Poetry reading: Watermelon Linguistics Poetry Reading and Book Signing
Alexis Krasilovsky (author of "Watermelon Linguistics" - finalist for the 2022 International Book Awards) and Sean Singer (winner, 2023 National Jewish Book Award for "Today in the Taxi") at the Ossining Public Library (53 Croton Ave., Ossining, New York), 2 PM, March 3, 2024, with a discussion led by filmmaker/poet Vanessa H. Smith (author of the forthcoming poetry book, "Room Tone").
"End of the Art World" [1971], featuring Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and others, was recently restored by a National Historic Preservation Award to the Yale Film Archives.
Its first screening since the restoration will take place at Yale's Humanities Quadrangle [the old Hall of Graduate Studies], 320 York Street, New Haven, Connecticut at 7 PM on March 7, 2024, as a double-bill with Chytilova's surreal comedy/drama, "Daisies". A Q&A will follow.
Alexis Krasilovsky at the Bedford Playhouse, 633 Old Post Road, Bedford, New York, 7 PM on Tuesday, March 12th, with a Q&A led by Vanessa H. Smith, author of the forthcoming book, "Room Tone."
NYC retrospective: The newly restored "End of the Art World" is scheduled for a 7 PM screening along with Krasilovsky's "Shooting Women" on March 13, 2024 in New York City, at the NACG [New American Cinema Group]/The Film-Makers' Cooperative, 475 Park Ave South, 6th Floor. A Q&A will follow.
"Shooting Women" (2008) celebrates camerawomen who film in Hollywood, Bollywood and beyond -- from camerawomen in the 1910's to women who are filming studio features, independent films, TV movies, webisodes, news and experimental digital projects -- and fighting for gender equity behind the camera.
It's also available as a book and Print on Demand, both on Amazon, and through the publishers at intellectbooks.co.uk in the UK, and press.uchicago.edu in the US.
The Yale Film Archive has been awarded a National Film Preservation Award to preserve "End of the Art World," the film that Alexis Krasilovsky made about the New York art world back in 1971, starring Andy Warhol, Bob Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtentein, Jo Baer and Michael Snow.
The premiere of the restored version will take place at Yale at 7 PM on March 7, 2024 as a double-bill with Vera Chytilova's surrealist comedy/drama "Daisies" and a Q&A with Alexis, at the Humanities Quadrangle (the old Hall of Graduate Studies), 320 York Street, New Haven, Connecticut. The public is welcome.
(Alexis Krasilovsky has fictionalized the entire process of making "End of the Art World" in the novel, "A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman," about a young woman determined to become a filmmaker despite the obstacles.)
web.library.yale.edu/news/2021/06/yales-first-film-created-undergraduate-woman-be-preserved
The screenplay for Tuki the Tiger shows extremely high streaming and box office projections in our Largo.AI report, and has just been selected as Finalist in the Gemfest International Screenplay Competition.
Our second-to-last draft of "Tuki the Tiger" won Honorable Mention in the December 2023 New York Screenwriting Awards in the category "Feature Screenplay/ Animation." That's a bit better than the Quarter-Finalist Awards we won in the San Francisco International Screenwriting Competition, the Faith in Film International Film Festival and Screenwriting Competition, and the L.A. International Screenplay Awards Summer 2023. "Tuki the Tiger" also won Quarter-Finalist in the 2024 Emerging Screenplay Contest: We're waiting to see if this draft moves up.
I hope by spring we'll have locked down our final draft so we can all see this children's animated feature get made! Super thanks to my co-screenwriter Shameem Akhtar and our Storyboard Artist Tiger Nazir in Bangladesh, as well as to our book agent, Eric Lincoln Miller (3iBooks Literary Agency) who has sent our Middle Grade novel, "Tuki the Tiger," out to publishers.
For more on folk artist Tiger Nazir and "Tuki the Tiger", see this feature article: newagebd.net/article/222580/i-aspire-to-promote-culture-tradition-among-people-nazir
For more on the story of how the "Tuki the Tiger" story came about, see: this Celluloid Magazine feature by Sydney Levine
"Positive Thinking" (2023) won "Best 1-Minute Film" at the Filmzen International Competition in Paris, France on June 28 and screened at the Ukrainian Dream Film Festival, held at the Crimean Tatar Cultural Center in Odesa, Ukraine along with "A Petal Pushed By a Breeze" (featuring a poem written and recited by internationally acclaimed writer Rodger Kamenetz (author of The Jew in the Lotus) on May 28.
"Positive Thinking" won "Best One Minute Film" at the Cult Jury Film Festival in Gurgaon, India. And it won the "Free Speech" award at the August/September 2023 Gangtok International Film Festival in Goan, Sikkim.
"Positive Thinking" is the monthly winner for August-September 2023 in the "Free Speech" category at the Druk International Film Festival (Paro, Bhutan). It is an Official Selection at the Black Swan International Film Festival (Kolkata, India) and an Official Selection of the Festival Cinemistica's "Espejos de Amor" ("Mirrors of Love") in Granada, Spain, screening in November 2023.
"Rafael", which features a poem by Rodger Kamenetz from his new book, The Missing Jew: Poems 1976-2022, screened at the Sofia International Film Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria along with "The Parking Lot of Dreams" (2021) on May 20.
"Rafael" was awarded Best One-Minute film at the Luis Buñuel Memorial Awards in Kolkata, India, and won "Best 1-Minute Film" at the World Film Carnival in Singapore in July 2023.
"A Petal Pushed By a Breeze" won "Best One-Minute Film" for the Tagore International Film Festival, and "Best Mobile Film" at the World Film Carnival in Singapore in July 2023. It also won "Best One-Minute Film" for August-September 2023 at the Druk International Film Festival in Paro, Bhutan.
"A Petal Pushed By a Breeze" is an Official Selection of the Liber Films International Festival, to be held in Athens, Greece on February 4, 2024.
"Verse for a Second Childhood" is an Official Selection of the Oodaaq Festival - part of a Friday, May 17th screening at La Parchemenerie (Rennes, France) of films about feminist and queer struggles.
"Verse for a Second Childhood"
is an Official Selection of The Artists Forum Spoken Word Competition held October 14, 2023 in New York City.
"Verse for a Second Childhood" screened at Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China on November 19, 2023 (along with Krasilovsky's earlier videopoem, "Pastriology," from her global feature documentary "Let Them Eat Cake") as part of a Zoom workshop, "Crafting and Sharing Videopoetry with Alexis Krasilovsky." For an article in Chinese about the event, see: fsc.hunnu.edu.cn/info/1345/12823
Alexis Krasilovsky's global feature documentary, "Women Behind the Camera," screened online October 4, 14 and 29, 2023 - as part of the Global Feminine Film Festival - "United Worlds Of, By, For the Feminine… as an ode to the Feminine at work in the world!"
(Please note: This film was completed and released in 2007, several years before Alexis Krasilovsky became a Writers Guild member. She fully supported the Strike!)
Alexis writes, "I'm deeply moved and grateful that the festival staff chose a still for its link page that features Amy Halpern, the wonderful cinematographer/gaffer and brilliant experimental filmmaker who recently passed away. I hope my film plays a small part in remembering Amy and the history of many other pioneer camerawomen around the world, including Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Senegal, Spain, the UK the the US."
"From Dhaka To Hollywood? Tuki the Tiger Takes a Trip: An Unusual Project", an article by Sydney Levine, was originally a keynote speech that she gave at the Dhaka International Conference of Women in Cinema at the Dhaka International Film Festival in January 2023.
The article is about the novel and screenplay for a children's animated musical feature that Shameem Akhtar and Alexis Krasilovsky have been co-writing. Once the Writers Strike is over, Shameem and Alexis look forward to getting that screenplay out there. And meanwhile, their literary agent, Eric Lincoln Miller, is preparing to send our novel, "Tuki the Tiger" (for Middle Grade kids ages 7-12) to publishers. Click this link to read the article (pages 4-10 in "Celluloid: A Magazine on Creative Cinema," Vol.44 Issues 1&2, July 30, 2023):
(Background illustration by Tiger Nazir.)
Still: Boy cutting sugar cane, Telangana, India.
Co-Producer: Sanjoy Ghosh; Unit Director: Ajit Nag
When "Let Them Eat Cake" first screened in 2014, it was ahead of its time, with scenes pertaining to global warming, food inequality, starvation, farmer suicides and refugees, in addition to some of the most beautiful pastries from a rich variety of cultures. We're excited that the world is ready to watch "Let Them Eat Cake".
If you missed the on-line screening at the Ceres Food Film Festival, October 16-20, 2022, you can still watch the film for free with a public library card on Kanopy.com.
Julian Joseph of the Ceres Food Film Festival interviews Alexis Krasilovsky, Writer/Director, "Let Them Eat Cake".
"The film is really powerful - as well as beautifully done. A remarkable feat to coordinate filming on five continents and in at least as many languages." - Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Joseph S. Atha Professor in Humanities, Stanford University
"Great interview, great film. So much we shouldn't look away from." -- Barbara Twigg - Washington, DC
"The Parking Lot of Dreams" will screen at the Oodaaq Festival on Sunday, May 19th at La Parchemenerie in Rennes, France.
"The Parking Lot of Dreams" 
was an Official Selection of the VideoBardo International Videopoetry Festival (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and the Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival (Wellington, New Zealand) in November 2023.
It is also an Official Selection for the 2024 Black Owl Film Festival, held in Bodrum, Turkey and the Liber Films International Festival, held in Athens, Greece on February 4, 2024.
"Very beautiful...the combination of the verbal and visual images makes a strong overall effect."
- Rodger Kamenetz, author of "The Jew and the Lotus" and "Dream Logic"
"Powerful. Unsettling. Moving."
- Miriam Mills
"…Highly original work! I read it as a poetic meditation on loneliness, alienation and anxiety, which also echoes the spatial, social and gendered subdivisions within and outside of the city.
The images are beautifully reconstructed, disfigured and displaced, which creates both a kinetic collision and harmony between words, images and locations within the space you explored.
I like that you playfully replace images of roads, highways and other more evocative places with the parking lot, which typically functions as a pit stop in the road movie genre …"
- Kornelia Boczkowska, Ph.D., author of "Lost Highways, Embodied Travels: The Road Movie in American Experimental Film and Video" orcid.org/0000-0003-0875-9209
The film is also an Official Selection of the following festivals: CalArts Expo, The International Poetry Film Festival, Hollywood; Amsterdam Short Film Festival; Nevada Women's Film Festival; San Diego Art Film Festival; Marina del Rey Film Festival; and the International Video Film Festival (Athens, Greece).
Three of the poems from the film are also included in Alexis Krasilovsky's new book, "Watermelon Linguistics: New and Selected Poems" (Cyberwit: January 2022 - available on Amazon at amazon.com/dp/8182538262.)
Here is the link for streaming the "The Parking Lot of Dreams": vimeo.com/ondemand/newyearnewwork2022
Watch an interview among the filmmakers in the NY Film-Makers Coop New Year/New Work Festival from March 19 here:
youtube.com/watch?v=ZKj7swqjQC4&t=952
The making of "The Parking Lot of Dreams" starts at 15:52.
"The Parking Lot of Dreams" is now available at Canyon Cinema, along with other titles: canyoncinema.com/2022/02/24/now-available-13-digital-files-from-alexis-krasilovsky/, and at the New York Film-Makers' Coop.
Finalist, 2022 International Book Awards
(Poetry - General category)
Available on Amazon
and Amazon UK
Read this Pegasus Literary review of "Watermelon Linguistics."
"The subtle power and intense imagination in these poems will certainly appeal to all readers. No doubt, the wealth of imagination and deeply inspired poetic fancy in these poems are quite remarkable.
'Watermelon Linguistics: New and Selected Poems' by Alexis Krasilovsky is a very powerful collection, full of vivid imagery."
-- Ellyn Maybe, poet/musician/lyricist
"Seismic poetry! 'Watermelon Linguistics' bites your conscience. Visceral as Garcia Lorca with the driving rhythms of Bartok, it penetrates your innermost, oft-repressed thoughts. Crying out against gender and racial injustice, it deserves our rapt attention."
-- Virginia Mariposa Dale, author of "Rich White Americans"
"What a journey poet Alexis Krasilovsky takes you on in her new collection of powerful and deft poems: WATERMELON LINGUISTICS. Intimate and conceptual, she communicates observed truths through vivid imagery and makes you feel her words."
-- Jocelyn Wright, performing writer, executive drama supervisor for TNT's
THE CLOSER
"Alexis Krasilovsky's poems are as lucid and vivid as the stark sorrows of life. The nuanced emotions reflected in her poems are endowed with the experience she has garnered through life and her films. The inequalities, injustice and social discrimination of a land so far away, strikes a vulnerable chord very close to home and make you realize how human failings trump political boundaries."
-- Sanjoy Ghosh, film and theatre director (India)
Alexis Krasilovsky's poetry celebrates, even as it chronicles the ruptures of the mythical, the political and the "sexual. The poems are attuned to the racial and gender divides of post 1960s America and offer a mirror to the dark heart of art and relationships. Her voice is an assured, witty, feminist cry in the nation's crazy historical wilderness. She reminds us of how much freedom we have and how many wounds still need healing."
-- Ramón García, Ph.D., author of The Chronicles
"I cried, laughed, and was awe-struck. I felt I was there with her during her time in Memphis. So much beauty, tragedy, and truth that you MUST read!"
-- Gilda Graham, author, "Penumbra"
"An absolute must-see: Alexis Krasilovsky's amazing film, SHOOTING WOMEN, now on Criterion. It's about women cinematographers. Brilliantly edited, comprehensive, joyful, and inspiring!"
- Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, Associate Professor of English, Cinema Studies, Comparative Literature at Rutgers University; founding co-editor of Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies
Film adaptation workshop with American professional at EMK
Alexis Krasilovsky conducted a five-day workshop on screenplay adaptation for the International Academy of Film and Media in Dhaka, Bangladesh, as well as serving as one of two American delegates at the International Conference of Women in Cinema and the "West Meets East" Conference at the Dhaka International Film Festival. While in Dhaka, the feature documentary which Krasilovsky wrote and directed, "Let Them Eat Cake," also screened at the EMK (Edward Kennedy) Center.
The workshop was based on Krasilovsky's book, Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling (Routledge: NY/London, 2018), 2nd Place Winner, 2019 International Writers Awards.
Watermelon Linguistics
Great
Adaptations
Let Them Eat Cake
Women Behind the Camera
End of the Art World
Beale Street
Epicenter U
Exile
Mr Boogie Woogie
