Alexis Krasilovsky has made a lot of sacrifices over the years in an effort
to produce her documentaries. She lived in a shack along the Mississippi for
two months, lost relationships, lived in poverty and worked a lot of long
days. Has it been worth it?
Absolutely. "It's a tough life, but it makes you alive," she says. "It's
a heightened sense of reality."
Krasilovsky is now an award-winning documentary producer whose work has
aired on The Learning Channel and PBS. But it was a career that almost ended
before it started.
Krasilovsky was just putting the finishing touches on a documentary of
the New York art scene, featuring Andy Warhol and other prominent artists,
when disaster struck. "My film was in a rusty tin can in the back of someone's
van and someone broke into the van and stole the rough cut of the film," she
says.
Krasilovsky saw her career go up in smoke as she heard the news. She had
basically decided to call it quits -- then she spoke to one of her professors
at Yale University.
"At this point, nobody in their right mind would have continued, but one
of my professors said to me, 'If you don't finish this film now, you'll never
be a filmmaker,'" she says.
Krasilovsky went back to the drawing board and started again with the film.
Despite a bumpy start, the film turned out to be a great success and is still
in distribution today.
Krasilovsky's art scene documentary kicked off a string of successful films
for her. But even with this success, the process didn't get much easier. Money
was still tight. Krasilovsky recalls the irony of putting the wraps on a documentary
about blues musicians just as the electric company was shutting off her power
for an unpaid bill.
Her next project found Krasilovsky living with sharecroppers in a trailer
along the Mississippi River. "I went to live with sharecroppers in their trailer
with seven cats, five dogs and a rooster," she says. While this rustic setting
helped Krasilovsky learn more about her subjects, there was another advantage
to this setting. It saved her $200 per month.
Like most documentary producers, Krasilovsky admits her work is a labor
of love. In fact, she's even sworn off making films a few times because they
keep her from making money and they're exhausting to do. "Lots of times I've
said, 'That's it, no more,' especially when I became a full professor at California
State," says Krasilovsky. Yet she always comes back to documentaries.
One of her recent productions, called Epicenter U, focused on the aftermath
of the Northridge earthquake and its impact on herself and her students. Krasilovsky
felt compelled to tell this story in the best way she knew how -- through
a documentary film.
In this way, the film spoke for her and her experience of the quake.
Likewise, Paul Arneault found his voice many years ago when he produced
a documentary of his travels in India. For him, this was a way to make sense
of everything he was seeing.
"I was overwhelmed by just about everything in India. I'd seen things like
the Taj Mahal as well as children collecting dung to make bricks in the city,"
says Arneault.
This early project changed the way Arneault looks at things. He can see
a documentary in almost anything. He says he'd be broke and very old by the
time even half of them were made.
The reality is, Arneault has to make a living. He does this by overseeing
the production of educational documentaries on subjects like history and science.
It's in his spare time that Arneault makes his own documentaries.
One of his projects documented the development of a local theater, its
struggles and successes. "This group had some really innovative approaches,
one of which was to include the audience in certain parts of the production,"
he says.
Arneault is well aware of the funding problems independent documentary
producers face. When producing educational films, Arneault is in charge of
making sure there are enough buyers for the films before they even get made.
In making other types of documentaries, he has to use every resource he can.
The chances of these films making any money are slim to none.
The lack of funding is frustrating because Arneault sees documentaries
growing in popularity. The problem is in the distribution.
"It's a miserable job to try and get these films distributed in any large
way," says Arneault, who believes if people had more access to documentaries,
they would demand more. "A well-made documentary is interesting for the same
reasons well-made films are interesting. They are about something compelling,
structured, visual, moving and educational, in a broad sense."
The financing difficulties have not stopped him from dreaming about new
documentaries, however. Arneault is planning to return to India,
this time with a bigger budget and years of experience behind him.
"I'm hoping to capture the vision I had [then]," says Arneault. "I can't
wait to get started."