Amy Kravitz was born in 1956 in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. She started making films when she was eleven years old at a summer creative arts program run through the public school system where she lived. She began teaching at age fourteen. She studied Anthropology at Harvard University where she received an AB, and Experimental Animation at California Institute of the Arts where she received an MFA.
Her films have won many awards and have screened throughout the world. Her film, “Trap” was considered by Jules Engel to be one of the ten essential films through which to teach the principles, techniques, and concepts of the art of animation. Her animation is a quiet testimony to the intimate collaboration between viewer and maker that takes place between each drawing.
Over four decades of teaching experience have enabled her to develop unusual teaching methods. Her methods encourage students to develop individual approaches to the medium. Her classes explore animation as a distinct language that employs unusual materials, unique spatial expressions, and visual metaphors as its grammar. In 2011 she received the Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching.
