Cristina Khuly is an artist living in Charlottesville, VA. Her work spans various media from film to sculpture.
From 2005 to 2017 Ms. Khuly was the Creative Director of Entertaining Ideas (formerly Rogues Harbor Studios), which she co-founded in 2005. Ms. Khuly oversaw Entertaining Ideas’ development of projects and was responsible for developing the Oscar nominated documentary films War Dance (2007) and How to Survive a Plague (2012). Her directorial debut, Shoot Down (2008), won the 2007 Best Documentary prize at the Sonoma Valley Film Festival. The film was released theatrically in January 2008 and is ranked among the top-grossing political documentaries.
In her capacity as an artist she has exhibited her sculptures in many galleries and museums including the Cooperstown Art Association in Cooperstown, NY; the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle, PA; the Carnegie Mellon University’s Hewlett Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA, and the Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee, Florida. In 2002 Khuly completed a 12 ft. x 17 ft. public commission, Flight, permanently installed in Downtown Miami, Florida.
From 1989 through 1999 Ms. Khuly worked as a model and commercial actress. Represented by agencies in Manhattan, Paris and Japan, Ms. Khuly traveled extensively and was featured on the covers of magazines such as Vogue, Mademoiselle, Marie Claire, Harpers Bazzar, New Woman, Brides and Cosmopolitan. She was featured in fashion campaigns such as ESPRIT, Valentino, Lilly Pulitzer and Benetton. Ms. Khuly has worked on television commercials for Vidal Sassoon, Meji ice-cream, Kirin beer, Honda and Clinique.
Ms. Khuly was educated at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island and received her BFA in Sculpture from the Florida International University in Miami in 1994.
A TRUE STORY OF FREEDOM, LOSS, AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
In the mid-to-late 90’s, thousands of Cuban refugees attempted to cross the Florida Straits by whatever means available – small boats, homemade rafts and inner tubes. Only one in four rafters made it to U.S. shores, with tens of thousands perishing at sea. A volunteer group based in Miami called “Brothers to the Rescue” was formed to patrol the Straits in small civilian aircraft, offering aid to rafters.
On February 24th, 1996, in the midst of heightening political unrest in Cuba and in the wake of a revised U.S. policy toward Cuban refugees, the unthinkable occurred. In those 90 miles of water separating the United States from Cuba, the Cuban government authorized two military fighter jets to attack and destroy unarmed civilian American aircraft over international waters.
In the tragic aftermath, four Americans were dead, U.S.-Cuban relations once again lay in tatters, a burgeoning and promising human rights movement in Cuba was crushed, and an unlikely heroine, Maggie Khuly, would lead the victims’ families on a 10-year struggle to piece together what really happened and why.
Winner of the 2007 Sonoma Film Festival Award for Best Documentary, Shoot Down is the first feature length film to tell the true and complex story behind one of the most pivotal events in U.S.-Cuba relations. It is a story of diplomatic relations, human rights, the fortitude of family and the dogged passion ignited by the search for truth and freedom.
First-time director Cristina Khuly, a first-generation Cuban-American whose uncle was among the four victims, mined 10 years of research, government documents, transcripts and never-before seen news footage of Fidel Castro to supplement hundreds of hours of original interviews in recounting the events leading up to and following the shoot down. Among the film’s most extraordinary moments are the use of actual voice recordings from the MiG pilots and their controllers in Havana, and the cockpit recordings from the doomed Cessna planes, edited to re-enact the shoot down itself.
