Alysa Nahmias is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of the Los Angeles-based production company AJNA. Her work has been shown at festivals and exhibitions worldwide, including the Venice Biennale, Sundance, LACMA, and MoMA, and she has made films with and for platforms including Netflix, HBO, PBS, and Al-Jazeera. Her directorial debut about Cuba’s revolutionary architecture, “Unfinished Spaces,” co-directed with Benjamin Murray, won a 2012 Spirit Award, and numerous film festival prizes. Her most recent feature documentary, 2019’s “The New Bauhaus,” explored the life and legacy of renowned artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
“Krimes” starts screening at the 2021 DOC NYC Film Festival on November 14. The fest runs from November 10-28.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
AN: “Krimes” is a story of confinement and freedom, of loss and creation. It follows artist Jesse Krimes, who is incarcerated for six years. While he is in prison, he secretly creates monumental works of art — including an astonishing 40-foot mural made with prison bed sheets, hair gel, and newspaper. He smuggles out each panel piece-by-piece with the help of fellow artists, only seeing the mural in totality upon coming home.
As Jesse’s work captures the art world’s attention, he struggles to adjust to life outside, living with the threat that any misstep will trigger a life sentence.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
AN: In 2014, I came across a profile of Jesse Krimes which included photographs of his large-scale artwork Apokaluptein:16389067. The work moved me; it struck me as a collision of anguish and beauty, and an emblem of its creator’s resilience and humanity. It captured something quintessential about why we make art, and why we need it. I was curious about the potential to explore a story set in two institutions — prisons and museums — that are foundational to contemporary conceptions of freedom, aesthetics, and subjecthood.
I got in touch with Jesse, and over the course of several conversations, he shared his story and introduced me to other artists he knew and collaborated with while incarcerated — Jared Owens, Gilberto Rivera, and Russell Craig. After a few months, I flew to Philadelphia to meet him. Though Jesse is a physically imposing man, his speech is intentional and thoughtful. He searches for the words carefully before he speaks them. I came to understand that Jesse’s creativity served as both a reflection of and a vehicle for subversive resistance to the American criminal-legal system, and that he would use similar ingenuity to critique the institutions and biases of the art world as well.
Our conversations — and eventually our filmed interviews — extended over the course of many years during the making of “Krimes.” I thought deeply about why Jesse’s story had a place in today’s vital conversations on justice and art. How can someone in Jesse’s shoes, who enjoys a relative position of privilege among those who have been incarcerated, use his artistic vision and his own story to step out of the spotlight and turn that light toward other people? And even more broadly, what is the most valuable, essential work we can do in the world with our creativity?
W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?
AN: I want “Krimes” to challenge assumptions and offer a counter-narrative to familiar stories about incarceration and art. I hope that after watching the movie, audiences will realize how pervasive the stereotypes and biases are about people who’ve been incarcerated, consider the inherent dignity in all human life, and question how we can begin to value human life and creativity more wholeheartedly.
I hope that the film will prompt audiences to imagine radical new ways of thinking about belonging, creativity, institutions, male friendships, and freedom.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
AN: Making a documentary is always a labor of love and can be an uphill climb. When I started the project it understandably took months to develop genuine trust with Jesse. He’d recently come home from prison, and is by nature an introvert, so he wasn’t looking to be on camera for his own sake, but he knew that telling his story could help others.
Over time, our connection became quite strong, and the film’s story grew bigger than either of us thought it would be when we began the project. In the end, it took fortitude to stay the course with this production for eight years, but with strong collaborators, we overcame any day-to-day challenges. And in the harder moments, I was inspired by Jesse’s tenacity. Any challenges that we faced felt insignificant compared to the obstacles Jesse and the other artists in the film had faced trying to create art while incarcerated.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
AN: “Krimes” is a truly independent film. It was funded through a combination of equity financing from investors, and philanthropic grants from foundations and individuals. In applying for grant funding there are always more rejections than wins, but we were fortunate to receive some grants for this film starting with the New York State Council on the Arts and later from the Harnisch Foundation, LEF Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, and other foundations.
We’re incredibly grateful for the support of our executive producers and grant funders, and I also want to acknowledge the support of the Sundance Catalyst program and the Sundance Momentum Fellowship, where I was a fellow in 2019 during the making of “Krimes.” Those programs contributed to my growth as an artist, and through them, I met some of the film’s executive producers, as well as my ace producer, Amanda Spain, who had been a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
AN: I became a filmmaker to tell a story that needed to be told on screen, which became my debut feature documentary, “Unfinished Spaces.” I co-directed that film with Benjamin Murray, who is also a producer on “Krimes.” It follows the story of three young, visionary architects who designed a school of art in Havana, Cuba.
What began with me, my friends, and the camera, turned into a film that premiered at major festivals and won a Spirit Award, eventually reaching a larger audience on PBS and Netflix. It was thrilling to elevate this story that felt so personal and essential to a larger audience, and I knew that filmmaking would be my life’s work.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
AN: Best advice: When things get tough, patiently embrace it to get through it. Know that it will not last forever, and do your best to focus on how you can flow through the waves to take you somewhere better rather than fighting against the reality of the current situation.
Worst advice: I’ve encountered people who approach relationships and negotiations in this industry from a place of fear. They often try to push others into that mentality of scarcity by saying that one should not ask questions or push back against unfavorable offers, terms, or status quo practices of supposedly powerful players. This isn’t true.
You care about your projects and you know your work best. Artists have power in that without us there is no so-called content. We create whole new realities. So, if someone is alienated by your questions or concerns as an artist, or they are trying to scare you into keeping quiet, it’s probably because they fear your power — and they probably aren’t someone you want to be in a relationship with anyhow.
W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?
AN: There is more than enough room for all of us. Let’s be generous and open-hearted with other women and nonbinary peers who we encounter at all levels of this industry. We have nothing to lose but the patriarchy.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
AN: One of my favorites in recent years is “Queen & Slim,” directed by Melina Matsoukas and written by Lena Waithe. The performances are extraordinary. The beauty and the tragedy of the story are visceral and urgent. I wish everyone in the world would watch this film.
W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?
AN: It’s been a busy pandemic. Apart from working on multiple films in various stages of production, I have been creative on a day-to-day basis with my family. I have two kids, ages ten and seven, so when schools closed in March 2020, our lives changed unexpectedly and dramatically.
We spent a lot of time outdoors on nearby hiking trails so that one or the other of us parents could work quietly in the house for a few hours each day. We found a huge tree under which the kids spent months constructing a fortress with swings, ropes, and benches. We thought the fortress might be removed by the park service before long, but instead, it became a lasting sanctuary for the neighborhood families, and it still exists. The kids and their babysitter even created a wishing tree there. The wishes written on index cards are everything from hopes that COVID would soon end, to getting a new hamster for Christmas, to being reunited with a deported relative, or healing from cancer.
This analog, grassroots creative space within our community kept me feeling inspired when endless Zoom meetings got me down. And now that the kids are back in school and I’m traveling for work again, I long for ways to maintain that aspect of collective creative life.
W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make it more inclusive?
AN: I see positive changes happening, and we have to keep building momentum because we have such a long way to go and so much at stake. Organizations like Brown Girls Doc Mafia, A-Doc, Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, Cousin Collective, Firelight, BlackStar, and others are making huge strides toward inclusion and equity in our field, and we all need to support those BIPOC-led organizations in tangible ways. It’s particularly important for non-BIPOC led organizations to show up for their BIPOC-led peers.
Individual filmmakers can also make a difference by hiring people of color for paid jobs on our productions. On “Krimes,” for example, we hired multiple BIPOC women department heads, as well as BIPOC, LGBTQ, and disabled crew members. We hired this way because those were the best people for the jobs, and they brought valuable experiences and perspectives to our team.
Individual filmmakers can also insist that any panel they appear on is majority BIPOC and intersectional, as well as accessible for people with disabilities. Just asking about representation and accessibility can make a difference. In fact, it’s crucial that we always keep in mind intersectional inclusion.
This is something very close to my heart and the advocacy work that I am committed to doing in the field as an active ally and founding member of FWD-Doc (Filmmakers with Disabilities – Documentary) along with Jim LeBrecht, Day Al-Mohamed, and Lindsey Dryden. Disability is also an underrepresented group, and BIPOC disabled people are often multiply marginalized.
Two of the documentaries currently underway in the FWD-Doc community, “Fire Through Dry Grass” directed by Andreas “Jay” Molina and Alexis Neophytides, and “Unseen” directed by Set Hernandez Rongkilyo and produced by Day Al-Mohamed, are examples of the kind of projects I find really inspiring. They are both led by BIPOC, disabled creators telling stories about their own communities from within, and they’re going to be amazing, groundbreaking works of art.
These are the sorts of projects we all want to see made, and it’s undeniable by now that audiences will show up to watch them.
