Khuly, Cristina

Persona

Khuly, Cristina

1970-

Cristina Khuly is a Cuban-American sculptor, actress, environmentalist, and film director and producer based in New York. She was born in Miami, Florida on January 20th, 1970. She is best known for making the 2008 documentary, “Shoot Down.”

Khuly’s early career was in acting and modeling in the United States and abroad. From 1989-1999 she appeared in numerous print and screen advertisements including for Vogue, Mademoiselle, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, New Woman, Brides, Cosmopolitan and Glamour, and was in fashion campaigns such as ESPRIT, Valentino, Lilly Pulitzer and Benetton. She was featured in commercials for Meji ice-cream, Kirin beer, Honda's Vita in Japan, as well as for the cosmetics brand Clinique.

In the mid 1990’s, Khuly pursued an education in fine arts, studying at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, and Florida National University. She received her BFA in Sculpture from the Florida International University in Miami in 1994. She worked in sculpture, painting, industrial design, graphic design and film and has won various awards for her art, including an Award in Sculpture from the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts in New Castle, PA, the New York Foundation for the Arts' Felissimo Design Award, and was the Miami Beach Art in Public Places "Electrowave Shuttle" Competition winner.

Her sculptural works have been displayed in gallery spaces 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, FL. She has also produced commissioned works such as "Flight," which is on view as a permanent installation in Downtown Miami, Florida since 2002.

Khuly is Creative Director of Entertaining Ideas, which she co-founded in 2005 with her husband, Douglas Eger. Khuly has directed and produced films, including investing in the 2007 documentary film, “War/Dance,” which went on to win a number of awards and an Oscar nomination and making a short film about the Cuban sculptor Enrique Gay García. Khuly directed, narrated, and financed the 2008 documentary “Shoot Down,” which is about the events that took place on February 24th, 1996 around two aircraft operated by the Miami-based anti-Castro organization “Brothers to the Rescue” that were shot down while trying to enter into Cuban airspace. As the documentary shows, the details of the incident are still disputed to this day due to political interests and tensions. The “Brothers to the Rescue” incident resulted in the death of four men, including Khuly’s uncle, Armando Alejandre Jr, which created a deeply personal connection to the topic of the documentary. As Khuly says in a 2007 Miami Herald interview regarding making the film, “I was walking over the graves of dead relatives.''' Despite the political nature of the film, it was received by a wider audience. Currently, Khuly works on land conservation projects in Upstate New York with her husband.

Biographical note written by Kate Villa, 2020-2021 UGrow Fellow for Manuscripts and Archives Management.

1. Shoot Down - Wikipedia

2. Cristina Khuly - Biography - IMDb (IMDb Mini Biography By: Audra Gorgiev)

3. BACHELET, PABLO. "Blow-by-blow account of Brothers to the Rescue tragedy." Miami Herald, The (FL), F1LA ed., 5 Aug. 2007, p. M1. NewsBank: Access World News – Historical and Current, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&docref=news/11AD70B68F99CE10.