Amy Kravitz

Professor
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RISD faculty member  Amy Kravitz
BA, Harvard University
MFA, California Institute of the Arts

Amy Kravitz (b. 1956 Wilmington, DE) explores animation as a distinct language that uses unusual materials, unique spatial expressions and visual metaphors as its grammar. She believes an intimate collaboration between viewer and maker takes place between each drawing. Her films—including River Lethe, The Trap, Roost and The Hour Coat—transform the vicarious phenomena of cinema into genuine emotional experience using timing, abstraction and movement to communicate on a visceral level. Her films have been lauded as powerful experiences that defy verbal explanation. The Trap was considered by Jules Engel to be one of the 10 essential films through which to teach the principles, techniques and concepts of the art of animation.
 
Kravitz’s singular teaching methods, refined over five decades of experience, encourage students to develop individual approaches to the medium and enable their unique voices. She is one of the principal architects of the animation program at RISD, and her approach to animation and teaching techniques informed RISD’s Movement Lab. In 2011 she received the Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching. 
 
Kravitz studied anthropology at Harvard University and experimental animation at California Institute of the Arts. She started making animated films at age 11 and was teaching by age 14. Her films have been screened at many festivals including the Ottawa International Animation Festival, Annecy International Animation Festival, Cork International Film Festival, Animafest Zagreb, Clermont Ferrand Festival of Short Films, Hiroshima International Animation Festival, Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, Melbourne International Animation Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Holland International Animation Festival, and Anima Mundi. They have earned numerous awards. Kravitz was honored with a retrospective and the honorary presidency of the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2022.

Academic areas of interest

Experimental Animation, Movement Study

Image
RISD faculty member  Amy Kravitz
BA, Harvard University
MFA, California Institute of the Arts