HOME3. -EXILE"
"Alexis Krasilovsky's Exile offers both a personal and historical perspective on intolerance.
Tracing the roots of her family over 200 years to the small town of Nikolsburg, Czechoslovakia,
Krasilovsky's 28-minute film returns to the place where generations of persecution for her Jewish
ancestors began. In Prague, in Vienna where some Jews still hide their heritage behind a
Protestant facade, in Dachau where Krasilovsky's pianist uncle's hands were frozen, and in New
York where she grew up, the filmmaker explores a history of exile, fear, hiding and
imprisonment and brings to life a rich world of art and learning shattered by the Holocaust." -
The independent
28 minutes, 16mm, color (1984). Distributed by Canyon Cinema, Film-Makers' Cooperative
and FACETS Video. Also available in VHS, 3/4" and broadcast quality1" video.http://www.facets.org/
4. "BEALE STREET"
Beale Street is where W.C.Handy wrote the blues, where Boss Crump abused his power, and
where Martin Luther King, Jr. marched days before his death in 1968. Beale Street has been
the victim of Urban Renewal, and we went to the original Beale Streeters who knew and loved
it best in the making of our oral history, including B.B. King, the Hooks Brothers, Bobby Blue
Bland, Prince Gabe, Maurice "Pess" Hulbert, Nate D. Williams and Rufus Thomas.
"The memories that we have—we older ones that's been around—the contributions that, you
know, have gone out to the world from this place-they sure shouldn't be left to die." -
B.B.King
28 minutes, 3/4" video, black & white, edited 1981 from 1977-78 feature-length production co-
directed by Alexis Krasilovsky, Ann Rickey and Walter Baldwin. Distributed by Canyon
Cinema in VHS.http://www.facets.org/
5. "WHAT MEMPHIS NEEDS"
Contrasting the black and white cultures of Memphis, Tennessee, What Memphis Needs is based
on a poem by Alexis Krasilovsky, written in the Free People's Poetry Workshop of the
internationally renowned "prison poet," Etheridge Knight. From ponies running through the
Memphis cottonwoods to a girl running across the construction site of Mud Island, from white
kids in a West Memphis parade throwing candy at black bystanders to a Bible reading in the
Lorraine Motel, and from rock 'n rollers to marquee lights on Beale Street, this video provides
a searing cross-section of Memphis history and society.
Winner, Poetry Film/Video Festival (San Francisco), Ann Arbor Film Festival Tour; "PBS'
"The 90*s"; International Poetry Festival (Boston); Filmforum (Los Angeles); Brooks Museum
"Cinemasterpieces" (Memphis); Museum of Modern Art (New York).