Independent Filmmaker and Director, artchange, inc.
As a documentary filmmaker, Ellen is interested in how we tell stories, share representations and define and respect intellectual property.
Questions and tensions related to intellectual property, copyright and fair use reverberate both in the use of a film and in the content when media documents cultural heritage.
Ellen has over twenty years of experience working cross-culturally and collaboratively, making films and participating in community-based projects with youth and adults. She holds a Masters in Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California. Her films include “Eating Alaska,” “Carved from the Heart,” “No Loitering” and “A Matter of Respect.” Ellen has had the opportunity to teach, mentor and encourage youth in community arts/media projects and artist residencies from Los Angeles to the village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island. She is also a member-owner in New Day Films, a distribution collective of 100 social issue media makers. As part of her work for the cooperative, for the past ten years, Ellen has researched trends in the field of non-fiction media and issues including digital rights in a changing media landscape.
