Alex Kalman ’99
Alex is a filmmaker in New York City
What have you done since graduation?
I went uptown to high school and then upstate New York for college. Now I am back in NYC and have founded a production company called Red Bucket Films — a six-person team down in Chinatown. We work on a multitude of projects, including films — short and feature, narrative and documentary — and commercials. We’re also involved in two educational video- sharing websites that are working with the City to give students an opportunity to use cameras.
How did your education at C&C shape the way you look at the world and the role you play in it?
It taught me to look at things from the human perspective and to interact with the world through curiosity and pleasure. The blocks were amazing. They were like living in some kind of abstract world where you could create anything you imagined. They also gave me a sense of problem solving – doing the most you can with what you have.
Do you consider yourself an innovator? A problem solver? A good citizen?
It’s a funny question because often I say that I want to innovate good solutions for problems that affect us as citizens.
What is your strongest memory of a learning experience at City and Country?
I remember the discussions the Group would have about the ethics and etiquette of dodge ball. And when the Group worked together to create a mini city in the classroom – that was one of the greatest lessons ever.
The education, above most, was experiential. Class times were a series of miniature life experiences, engrained more vividly in my memory than high school or college. Dissecting rats in the morning, raising chickens in the middle of the day, printing a magazine after lunch, balancing an imaginary check book in the afternoon, making sure the youngest in the school meet their parents at recess and Saltines and dodge ball after school. City and Country illustrated for me at a very young age the possibility of pursuing something that makes me inherently smile at the possibilities of that something.