Featuring the Documentary 'Let Them Eat Cake'

Film Synopsis


 “Let Them Eat Cake” is not your typical documentary. It is a poetic essay that takes its audience on a journey through twelve countries, exploring the contrast between pastry making and consumption in various parts of the world. While in some parts of the world those who farm the ingredients for pastries can’t even afford them, in Paris, Tokyo and Los Angeles, lavish pastries adorn the shelves of pastry shops along the streets. Written and directed by award-winning director Alexis Krasilovsky, “Let Them Eat Cake” addresses the planetary emergency of too little food, while seducing the viewer with the lavish traditions and beauty of pastry and cake-making that call us back to the roots of our childhood. The film is now available on VOD and DVD. Visit the "Buy Film Now" tab at www.pastriology.com for more information. 

 Bio of Alexis Krasilovsky

 Writer/Director/Co-Producer of Let Them Eat Cake, is the winner of a lifetime achievement award from the 2011 Gdansk DocFilm Festival and the Tribute Award “for achievements in independent cinema” from the 2008 San Francisco Women’s Film Festival. Her films, videos and holograms includeWomen Behind the Camera (and the TV version, Shooting Women) -- winner of five "Best Documentary" awards; End of the Art World, starring Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg; Just Between Me & God, shown nationally on The Learning Channel’s series, “The Independents”; Exile, filmed in Czechoslovakia before the fall of the Iron Curtain and aired nationally on PBS; and Childbirth Dream, a 35mm hologram exhibited in the Georges Pompidou Center (Paris). Krasilovsky studied film history at Yale and received an MFA in Film/Video from CalArts. Krasilovsky, who lives in Los Angeles, is Professor of film studies and screenwriting at California State University, Northridge, and a member of the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Women Directors. 

 What motivated you to do this, and what were you trying to get at with the film?

On a personal level, I remember my mother forcing me to eat tasteless, previously frozen peas, which I swallowed one by one, like bitter medicine, while she told me, “Think of the starving children in India.”  That stayed with me, especially in 2001 when I went to Mumbai to film my first global documentary, and found myself surrounded by beggars.  I also remember being a fat kid gorging on pink and white Hostess Snowballs.  My mother compensated for the poverty and neglect of her childhood by giving her children two or three pieces of candy, cookies, pies and cakes every day.  There were special birthday cakes, gingerbread decorating parties at Christmas, and pilgrimages to Brooklyn for crumb cakes from the original Ebinger’s Bakery.

I also remember wanting to put my head in the oven, influenced by Sylvia Plath’s poetry.  Making a film about baking is a better use of an oven in my life, I think.

What are the ethics of directing a global film?

I try to think of myself as a global citizen, rather than as an auteur.  The subjects of the film should come first.  My individual experience is important, but only in the context of other individual experiences.  I try not to dominate with my point of view; I try to listen from behind the camera to others’ perspectives.  For example, Christopher Garumbullo, the son of Rogene Garambullo, a Jicarilla (pronounced “Yih-cah-RIYa”) Apache elder, Unit Directed our interviews shot in New Mexico.  It would have been disrespectful for me to dictate exactly what to shoot.  The very word “shooting” instead of “gathering” footage is something that I question.  

 

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