“Ellen Kuras: The Vision Behind the Lens — Mastering Storytelling in Film & Cinematography - Women Unscripted

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Melan Curras and I'm a director cinematographer.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Art, the podcast where we get
to know women from around the world of visual arts.
I'm Chris Stafford and this is season three, Episode twenty three.
My guest this week is the multi award winning OSCAR
nominated American director and cinematographer Ellen Curras, whose credits include

(00:32):
Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind when she was the cinematographer,
The Betrayal Nara Coon where she was director, producer, screenwriter
and cinematographer, and most recently, her dramatic directorial feature debut Lee.
Ellen is an unprecedented three time winner of the Cinematography

(00:53):
Award for a Dramatic Film for Swoon in nineteen ninety two,
Angela nineteen ninety five, and Personal Velocity two thousand two.
In twenty twenty two, she was the first woman cinematographer
to win the American Society of Cinematographer's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Ellen was born in New Jersey in nineteen fifty nine,

(01:16):
where her father was an avionics engineer and her mother
a homemaker. She graduated from Brown University with a double
BA degree in anthropology and semiotics, while also taking classes
in photography and film at the Rhode Island School of Design.
She then started her career in the film industry in
nineteen eighty seven in New York as a camera assistant

(01:39):
and film electrician while pursuing a master's degree at night
at New York University. The Betrayal Nerrakoon, which follows a
family from war torn Laos who were forced to flee
and then adapt to life in America, was conceived as
her master's thesis, for which she won a Prime Time
Best Documentary MNA. She won her second Primetime Emmy for

(02:03):
Jane in twenty eighteen. Ellen has collaborated with such great
directors as Michel Gondry, Spike John's Spike Lee, and Martin
Scorsese on features like Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind,
Blow He Got Game, Pretend It's The City, and Killers
of the Flower Moon. Ellen represents the Cinematographer's branch on

(02:27):
the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences Board of Governors,
and has served as the asc ICG representative on the
National Film Preservation Board. Ellen has most recently directed for
a new Heist TV series twelve twelve twelve for Apple TV,
and the TV series Scarpetta with Nicole Kidman, Ariana de

(02:51):
Boz and Jamie Lee Curtis for Amazon Prime Video. Ellen
lives in New York. Ellen, Welcome to the pocas. Thank
you so much for taking time to do this.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Thank you, it's a real pleasure. I love your work.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Busy would be just an understatement for you. You've had
quite the year, haven't you.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yes, I haven't been home really at all because a
year ago I released the film Lee, which I directed,
which is about Lee Miller starring Kate Winslet, and the
film went, you know, all over the world. So we
were very busy with that, and I've been all over
the world working. I work primarily now as a director.

(03:33):
I've been doing a lot of series work, and also
I still shoot occasionally for certain directors that I know
and love, like Spike Lee and Marty Squissezy.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
I'm wondering if, by any chance, you can share what
you're working on this year.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
I just finished doing a series. I did a block
of a series called twelve twelve twelve, which is a
new Apple series coming out next year. We'll see the
first pilot starring Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan. And then
I also worked on Scarpetta, which was another series which

(04:13):
is coming out starring Nicole Kidman, Arianna Debos, and Jamie
Lee Curtis, so three Academy Award winning actresses all in
the same series, which was really so much fun to
work on, so exciting, and it's a great story.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
That's a lot of high energy. I would think, right there, right.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
There, and you know it. And it's very interesting because
I come from the world of cinematography. So one thing
that cinematographers don't often get pretty to is how do
you speak to actors to get them to go where
you want them to go. So it's been a learning
curve for me ever since I started directing Narrative, which

(05:01):
was god probably about ten years ago. Now that I started,
I was I was asked to shoot a pilot and
I couldn't shoot it, but they said, can we pick
your brain for an hour just about the ideas? Because
it was very much about the collective unconscious. And I'm
very intellectual when I approach movies, and I get very

(05:23):
much into the ideas and the meaning of what something
is about and how you can visually express that. So
they wanted to kind of pick my brain about you know,
how would you see this show. So we sat there
and we had dinner for three hours. And then six
months later they called me and they said, would you
like to direct two of the episodes? And that was
kind of my entry into the world of narrative, which

(05:47):
was great because when I started many many years ago,
when I wanted to be a filmmaker, I wanted to
be a filmmaker. I wasn't thinking, oh, I want to
be a cinematographer. I wanted to make films. I wanted
to make films that had me, Films that would affect
people and new people in the world and have import
about what was going on at the time, or be

(06:08):
a reflection of history. And so, you know, I started
making this film. I decided I would go and get
my masters at NYU after I had already gotten my
BA at Brown and I thought, well, I'm in New York.

(06:28):
You know, I'm starting to work. I might as well
just take some classes and see if I can get
my masters as well. Might as well. So I did
all the coursework and I started making this film, which
was supposed to be for a thesis project, and I
was really interested in again history and politics and how
they intersect with the personal. So I was interested in

(06:50):
this family whose father had worked for the CIA during
the war in Laos. And now looking in retrospect, you know,
one can see how the American foreign policy at the
time was very much about hiring other people in their
own countries to fight our wars for us. And I

(07:11):
think that people now see that much more because of
the Afghani situation. And so I worked on the film
for a long time and found that it was really
difficult to make that film because the US has never
admitted that we fought a war in Laos. We weren't
supposed to have any ground troops, so the US ended

(07:34):
up going by air and fighting a secret air war
and they never admitted it. Even to this day, we
haven't admitted that we fought a war there. Yet there
were thousands and millions of refugees that came out of
that country and that are living here, and people, you know,
they were in a way, their identity was at stake.
It's like, well, why are we here? And people had

(07:57):
asked them why are you here? But the US hadn't
admitted that we fought a war there, but they used
a lot of those men to be on the ground
and to take the bronch. So we've all heard about
the you know, gorilla Army that the United States started
in Laos, and we basically owned their military, much like

(08:19):
we did in Afghanistan. So you know, for me, it
was the question was how do you tell a story
about a political situation and still make it personal? So
telling the personal then in the overview of the historical
political And I thought I face that same question when

(08:42):
I went to go do Lee years and years later,
because and I think we all kind of look at that.
It's like, how do you bring people and audiences to
a story that affects them emotionally that you can identify
with the character. So we're seeing more films come out now,
more and more that have to do with the political

(09:04):
situation and having a character that takes us through that.
So that's what I did many years ago. But it
took me a long time to make that film because
I couldn't access any archival footage. The country was classified.
Laos was a classified country. All of the archives in
Washington were classified, the National Archives. I couldn't see any films,

(09:28):
propaganda films that the US have made because they were classified.
So how do you make a film? I had to
wait and wait to see if I could get some
footage because and I ended up making my own footage,
which is the personal experience of the character when he's
escaping Laos. So I recreated that in the spirit of

(09:50):
the truth. So it's still a documentary, it's but it
was in the spirit of the truth that comes to
the emotional truth. After twenty years, when Afghanistan was happening,
I went back and said, I have to finish this film.
I got really busy. I was working as a cinematographer.
That's how I became it's a photographer. People saw what

(10:13):
I was doing on that film and they said, oh,
will you shoot for me? So I ended up becoming
a cinematographer because they could see that I understood meaning
and metaphor and how to create meaning with the images.
But so I went back and finished that film and
then I won the Prime Time Emmy for it, and

(10:33):
I got nominated for an Academy Award for that film.
And it goes to show you if you haven't finished something,
still keep faith in it, because if you go back
to it. You don't know what is what's going to
happen with it. You know, as long as it has
something to say, something meaningful to say, people will hear you.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Well, you certainly portrayed that with lee. As you said,
talk about truth, truth, and they're a hidden story for
so long. And there are many of those too, but
it speaks to how you are all about the truth.
You mentioned this to me before we started recording, Ellen,
and I see this in your work very much so

(11:16):
that the nuancewers of truth now, which has become a
precious gemstone today.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yes, well, I mean, as we know, one of the
first moves of the present administration back in twenty sixteen
by our current president, you know, was to question the
truth and to basically say, oh, that's fake news. Therefore
I'm telling you the truth. So that was a device

(11:43):
that was set up that the Nazis used, that Hitler
used basically to question the truth. That is a one
oh one playbook. Waull make people question what's actually reality.
So you're saying, I'm telling you the reality, so believe me. So,

(12:04):
and that's the basis of propaganda. And what we're seeing
today is that propaganda on the internet because it's very
easy to put to put lies up on the internet
to talk about lies. Before people used to say that's
not true, and they would fact check, but that seems

(12:24):
to have gone out the window because of this propaganda
that people are believing, and people no longer are going
to go and check and fact check, and they're not
being checked as we see. As we learned when I
was growing up in America that the American government has
a system of checks and balances. Right, they were like,

(12:44):
don't worry, democracy is safe because there's checks and balances.
But what they're doing is they're taking away all those
checks and balances. And so what we have is what
can you believe anymore? You know, are you going to believe?
Talk show host you know, on on on, you know,

(13:05):
on a very fundamentalist airwave. And I'm talking about fundamentalism
on both sides of the line, right, We're talking about
extreme right and extreme web. I mean, I'm talking about,
you know, fundamentalism and how it's manipulating all of us
into believing that they are the truth. And I think

(13:29):
that this is going to be this is very dangerous
and we're in a very dangerous time right now, and
having gone back to do extensive research on World War
two between the wars, so after World War One was
a very right time for the Nazis to take over
because they because people were hurting economically right the war.

(13:53):
There are a lot of people who lost their jobs,
so people were starving, the same kind of that's happening
now in this country. You know, they couldn't find jobs.
You know, there was there was general malaise. And so
that's when Hitler stepped in and said, I am you're

(14:14):
a savior. I'm a man of the people. Why do
you think there were pictures of him on the backs
of trucks handing out loaves of bread to people to
show that I care about you when he didn't care
about them at all. So you know, I saw the
patterns of history back in the thirties up to now,

(14:37):
and I see the same patterns happening. And that's why,
you know, with a film, when you think about the
power film to be able to remind people, to take
them to a situation where they can vicariously relive what
that situation is. So that's why I said to Kate,
it's really important that we start the film in the

(14:58):
late thirties because exactly the same time, people did not
believe that Hitler would be calm who he did, and
they couldn't foresee the destruction of Europe. I mean it
was I mean everybody was saying, oh, it's not going
to be anything. Oh he just became chancellor, where he

(15:19):
manipulated himself becoming chancellor. Right, So there were all of
these things that are mirroring what's happening today. People were saying, oh,
it's not going to be a big deal back in
twenty sixteen, and I said, be careful, because that's exactly
what happened in Nazi Germany. And we see and it
wasn't only you know what happened. I mean, the war

(15:46):
affected everybody's life. There were millions of people who were killed.
But when you look at the photographs and you go
back and you look at World War two, it was destroyed,
Dresden was flattened, and you see cities that their entire ubble,
you know, And that is that was what I was

(16:06):
really interested in Lee Miller because she was able to
witness this firsthand. When she was in World War Two.
She went to Europe. She wanted to do her part
to take photographs to show people what had happened. And interestingly,
when she brought those photographs back, you know, people would say, oh,

(16:28):
you know, is this really true? And that's why when
she wrote on the envelope to Audrey Withers, who was
the editor of Vogue in London. They were publishing these
stories about the war in a fashion magazine. Right, that's
how radical these two women were. And she said to

(16:49):
Audrey on the outside of the envelope, believe this, believe it.
And so you know, you find I think it so
speaks to to and what's happening today in the world
that people are not believing what they're seeing, and you know,
there's fake news, fake news, lies being told. I mean,

(17:12):
there's peaceful protests going on around the country, and yet
people are being arrested who are peaceful protests and it's
being called that they're being insurrectionists, which is absolutely not
the case. And we see that, and we see that
the journalists are being silent, much like they were in Gaza, right,

(17:33):
killed in silenced, and they're being silentd here in this country.
And you see it, and I'm just waiting for the
next step because they are trying to go as far
as they possibly can, so the truth becomes up for grabs, Right,
what do you believe? Do you believe what somebody's telling
you who's known to be a pathological liar, or do

(17:54):
you believe? Do you believe? You know, the journalists who
are on the ground or impartial, who are just trying
to show what's happening, they're the ones that are being silent.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
Believe what you see, not what they say.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yes, and knowing that AI is coming is here. You know,
that's a whole other aspect of our lives today.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
I want to come to that, but I want to
rewind the clock a little bit, you know, because that's
what we do on this show. Ellen, we take you
back to some of the you know way we it
all began for you because it began in New Jersey
nineteen fifty nine, and you came from Polish ancestry. So
I'm very interested in that because politics is important to you,

(18:41):
and clearly your ancestry is who you are very much.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
So, yeah, my ancestry, I'm very much attached to my
pause background and my ancestry. But because my parents, my
father was the first generation, my mother was a second
generation actually, but they spoke Polish at home.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Can you speak Polish?

Speaker 1 (19:08):
I can speak a little Polish. Oh yeah. I grew
up hearing it in the house because when I was
in high school, my grandmother came to live with us
because my grandfather died. So she I shared a room
with my grandmother, so and she could hardly speak any English.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
So right there we talk about politics and you being
from this Polish ancestry, I'm wondering how much the politics
of your family influenced you when you were young and
shaping your political viewpoints very much.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
So. My grandfather was an immigrant who came here to
this country before World War One? Okay, right, And my grandmother,
my grandmother, was fifteen and she told her grandma, my
grandmother was fifteen. She told her mother the day before
she was going to leave. She says, I'm going to America.
And she left at fifteen years old from a village

(19:59):
near Crackle. And I don't know how she got to
the boat, but obviously had no money. It was stowage,
I'm sure. And how do you do that at the
age of fifteen and come to America? And she did.
And my grandparents, my father, my grandfather was very smart.
He was really smart in math, but you know, he

(20:22):
had no education. He had he had a little education,
but they experienced extreme discrimination. I mean it was prevalent
back then, as you know, you know, the Italians, the Irish,
everybody all white of course, but completely dumped upon. And

(20:44):
you know, and I felt I felt that as a child,
you know, the that feeling of having been dumped on.
You know, my father was determined to succeed, determined, at
the age of seven, went out to design and choose
so that he could help support the family. Now, my aunt,
his older sister, was brilliant as my father was brilliant.

(21:09):
So when she graduated from high school, she was offered
a full four year scholarship to study nuclear physics. And
can you imagine, this is the early forties and nuclear
physics was a time because she was brilliant, right and
for a woman and for a woman, and the high

(21:31):
school tuidance counselor told her girls don't do science, and
he called he had a huge slur, polish slur. And
my grandfather was so upset, He's like, no, you know,
he was, you know, he took her out of school.
He was so upset. But that shape. My aunt ended

(21:54):
up becoming a very accomplished accountant, but she never got
paid what her Uh, she would be the boss, and
the people underneath her, the men would get paid more
than too. That was something that really made a mark
on the end, and I was like, fuck that shit,
you know.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Was this on your father's side.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
My father's side, my mother's died actually the more artistic side,
believe it or not. My aunt, my mother's older sister,
took photographs. She always had a little brownie camera with her.
And I found a bunch of those photographs after she
died and I have them, you know, and there's some
really interesting shots in there. But the fact that she

(22:39):
was an avid photographer, I thought. I never really thought
about it until much later. You know.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Yeah, what members do you have of, you know, interacting
with your grandparents. Were you close to either set of grandparents?
Did you have a favorite?

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, we were very close. I mean my grandmother on
my mother's side. I never knew my grandfather. He died
before I was born, but she lived in Baltimore. So
that was another thing that I think was interesting about
the immigrant experience was that my mother grew up in
a Polish enclaved in Baltimore, and she had her cousins

(23:19):
and aunts and uncles all around her. And then when
she met my dad, which they met in Maine on
a boat. I think because they could both speak Polish
and they both had similar backgrounds, they came together. She
left her family to go live in New Jersey because
my father was an engineer at itt And I realized

(23:41):
only you know, years ago, just recently, you know how
much my mother gave up to raise four kids by herself,
you know, with her husband, traveled all over the world,
and she did it all on her own. And you know,
to be not near her family was a huge thing,

(24:02):
you know, to have this huge extended family and to
leave and to be without that. You know. So you know,
you only in your adulthoods you go back and you
start thinking about, okay, you see your parents as people
and how things have happened. You know. I think a
lot of us as kids, we don't see that. We
just see them as our parents and we don't see that,

(24:24):
you know, they're actual people. And I think, oh my god,
what was my mother doing when she was my age?
Or you know, you start thinking about okay. So when
I turned forty. What was my mother doing. She already
had four kids, you know, you know she was She
had me when she was twenty eight and I was
number three.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
So you can imagine your father was very accomplished ellen
as an engineer.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yeah, very much. So he was a brilliant engineer. He
was an entrepreneur, an innovator. He used to He started
out at IT, which was international telecommunications company. It was
kind of what Veriza is or you know, at and T.

(25:12):
And he then he he wanted to start his own company,
so he and about six other guys left it to
start a company. But he was the boss. And I
have to say, I look upon that little company that
he made with a lot of pride because he was

(25:34):
beating out huge companies for contracts, so ge raytheon, you know,
giants in the field of electronics and avionics, so you know,
and he was always for me. The most important thing
about my father is that he was a man of integrity.
And just before he died, I asked him, I said, Dad,

(25:56):
so what do you think your legacy is? And he
said that I kept integrity intact. Because you know, people,
you know, they get buffeted by everything, by all these
different forces, but he was always someone who cared about
the people who work for him. He always cared about

(26:19):
people who struggled. My father was always about trying to
help people. And I remember when he would tell me,
you know, he'd go to TYPEI because he was part
of the defense there, you know, he was. He said
that he spent a lot of his life helping to
defend TYPEI, to keep it independent. But he would go

(26:41):
to a huge dinner with generals and admirals and he
would ask one of the translators to go into the
kitchen and he would go and talk to the workers
in the kitchen, and he'd want to know, so, how
much do you make a week? Or you know, how
many children do you have? And he would talk to
the people in the kitchen. He was also very much
into cooking, so wanted to know what the cooking once
as well. But that's the kind of person that my

(27:04):
father was. He was a very generous, gregarious kind of person,
and so that really influenced me. And I think in
my career, I've always approached my crews and people with kindness,
no matter what job they do, and I've always treated
them with respect. And I see it again and again.

(27:27):
It doesn't matter if it's a film industry or wherever.
As soon as people get into positions of authority or power,
they start using that power and they think they can
start dumping on people who are working for them. And
I've never done that, and I've always said to people
and said to students who are coming up, I said,

(27:50):
you don't have to be an asshole to be good, right, So,
you know, kindness wins over so much more. And that's
why I can go anywhere in the world and work
and people will want to work with me because because
they know that I treat them with respect and with kindness.
And I really think that we've lost that in the world,

(28:10):
and you know comes from the top, you know, leadership,
and that if they say, oh, well, you can treat
people badly and beat them up and beat the shit
out of them and be a bully, then people think
they have permission to do that. And I encounter that.
I said, no, you don't. And I see the evidence
of that all over the world, that people think that

(28:33):
now they can treat people with disrespect and be bullies
and I'm sorry, but why are you doing that?

Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's clear that those are values that you got from
your father. I'm wondering about your relationship with your mother
and what she taught you that you've appreciated later in life.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
My mother was very much like that as well. I
think that was something that my parents shared very deeply,
the state values that are about respect and and kindness
and helping people. You know, my mother was very much
like that as well. But I do say that, you know,

(29:15):
my father put a lot of pressure on me to
get what he called a real job for years, and
you know, very early in my career, you know, I
went on off on a limb to buy a camera
because I wanted to be a cinematographer. You know, when

(29:35):
I realized that, you know, I had something, you know,
I really wanted to do that. And yet so I
went to the visual studies workshop. It's a long story,
but I worked in a museum in my last year
at college in Brown University, and it was really interested
in how museums talk about people right and how museums

(30:02):
or reflection of the community. So there was this woman
who took over this natural history museum, Mary Ane Kucini.
I still remember her name, and she was a dynamite.
But she believed in turning this museum around. Of course,
you know, it was run by a bunch of old
ladies who knew nothing. The curator was stealing all of

(30:24):
the Native American artifacts and selling them on the black market,
and so it was like, okay, stop all of that,
you know, fired the guy and we turned the museum
into a community museum. So that's how I got to
know the Southeast Asians because I lived in the Cape
Verdian neighborhood in Providence, and all of a sudden, all

(30:46):
of these among people were newly arrived, you know. So
I'd see them in traditional clothes walking down the street
with chickens, and you know, I said, who are these people?
You know, what's going on? And that's how I became
much more where it is. Right after the Vietnam War,
so we're talking about nineteen eighty. You know, the war

(31:07):
ended in seventy five, and then these refugees were coming,
right so the Cambodian. So we made the museum into
you know, a community museum where I then was programming.
So I went to the community and I said, you know,
if you loan me these beautiful britiques which told the
story of the war I'll put them in the museum.

(31:29):
So I did a big, huge exhibition around Southeast Asian
art with the people and brought them to talk with translators,
had them sharing their crafts, and the Cambodians, the Mong,
the Vietnamese, everybody, put you know, their things together because
I felt like if they see themselves in a museum,

(31:49):
they're going to feel like they belong. And then I
did it with Eastern European immigration because that had happened
many years before, so it's like we see the waves
of it mcgrason. And that's the thing I think which
it's interesting about today is that in America, it's like, guys,
we are a country of immigrants. We come from immigrants.

(32:11):
Even the President's family came from Scotland and it's like,
come on, you know, his wife wasn't born here. So
there's a real hypocrisy going on in terms of doing that.
And that's why I tried to make my actions speak
for what the meaning is. But anyway, so I don't
know how I got off on that tangent about going

(32:33):
to province.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
But yeah, let's go back a little bit because I'm
wondering what the young Ellen did when you were when
you were small. Did you play with your siblings, did
you were you particularly close to your older brother Jeff,
or your or your sisters.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
I would say the most defining influence in my childhood
was the fact that I grew up in a neighborhood
where everybody knew everybody else. It was a cul de
sac neighborhood. Everybody was from different countries from all over
because you know that neighborhood was established in the fifties,
so post war. So we had neighbors from Germany. We

(33:14):
had neighbors who German neighbors, but German nationals. Next door
was my best friend's family. She was a conservative Jew.
He her father escaped from Nazi Germany as a child.
And here you have two people living right next door
to each other. We had Czechoslovakians down the hill. We

(33:36):
had people from everywhere all over the world in this neighborhood,
and all the kids played together, and everybody knew each other,
and we helped each other, and I have to say,
it really made us feel a community. You know. It's
like I went up the street and you know, somebody's
mother was outside and we were being bad. She would

(33:58):
come over and smack us, you know, but when there
was smacking able to be having. But you know, it's
like everybody in the neighborhood was your parent and everybody
watched over each other. And to me, that's what community's about.
And you know, today, I think that we have gotten
away from that. That in America people have become much

(34:19):
more individualistic and they don't they care about themselves. And
my father used to say, yeah, it's this, it's the tendency.
Hooray for me, the hell with you, you know, and
that I think is now defining America as opposed to
for the most part, because you know, I live in
a community now, which is people help each other. But

(34:42):
you find that in Japan, you know that, you know,
the collective and the community is important. Why do you
think that people wear a mask when they're sick so
that other people don't get sick. So the fact that
it became a huge deal in this country where you know,
I don't want to wear a mask because they're being selfish, right,
you don't care about the person who's next to you,

(35:05):
And that's when America has become you know, it's like
I want my rights. Well, if I'm going to talk
about rights.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
I want my.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Right not to be shot. Right, If I'm going to
talk about my personal rights, I have a right not
to be shot. So how does that compare to your
right right? So, you know, I think that people only
look at one side of the spectrum when it comes
to rights, you know, about what their rights are, as
opposed to what other people's rights are as well. That's

(35:35):
a whole other discussion.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
Did your parents lose any family members during World War Two?

Speaker 1 (35:49):
No, but my grandmother lost three children under the age
of seven. So she lost two kids during the first
pandemic ages two and three, which must have been devastating.
I can't imagine. And then she lost a son, my brother,

(36:09):
my father's older brother. And it's controversial, but I think
that he there were gangs of kids who used to
rove around the railroad the rail yards, and they were
hired by a gang boss to collect coal. And I
think that he was killed by a train and I

(36:31):
think it had something to do with his being Polish
that you know, I think that I think he was
you know, that they pushed him. Well, that's my own opinion.
But anyway, in terms of World War Two, both of
my mother's uh well, one of my mother's brothers and

(36:52):
my aunt's husband, my mother's sister's husband, went to World
War Two, and unbeknownst to me, they both were liberators
of concentration camps. I didn't know this and find this
out until I had today three months before my uncle died.
My uncle by my aunt's husband, and he went as

(37:14):
a nineteen year old and went to Germany, and it
probably was in tour Gala, the same thing as Lee Miller.
And I didn't find this out until I gave a
book to him that a friend of mine wanted to
make it to a film. It was about World War two.
It's about a spy from World War two who uncovered
the location of a lot of the concentration camps. And

(37:40):
so I sent him this book. And I said to
Uncle Carl, I said, did you get my book? Did
you read it in the book that I said, you're
not my book, but you know the book? And he said, yeah,
he said I did. He says I was there. I said,
what do you mean you were there? It says I
was in Ordolf. He said, I liberated or Off And
that's that's how I met General Patton. I'm like what

(38:05):
he said, yeah, I was. I was there. I couldn't
believe it. And I had wanted to interview him because
I know that they had interviewed a lot of the liberators.
And then he died and I didn't have a chance
to and I always regret that. I think, you know,
that goes to show you when people say, oh I
should do this, or I should talk to that person,

(38:26):
you do it because they're not going to last forever,
you know. So and then I found out that my
mother's brother, who was very close with my other uncle,
that they that he was in the war. He was
also a Torgo, which is when the Russians came together

(38:48):
to meet the Americans, right when they were in that
final push to you know, overcome Nazi Germany, and he
he liberated Birkenhal and Bukenwald. So it was like, oh
my god, I can't believe that. I never knew that,
you know, they never spoke about it, and interestingly speaking

(39:10):
about the truth. So my uncle had come across a
fallen journalist right who was killed because there was still
skirmishes and taking over the concentration camps, you know, the
German guards were still fighting and there was a journalist
who was killed, and my uncle saw that he had

(39:31):
his camera, he took the film from the camera and
so apparently, and I didn't know this until my cousin
told me when I was doing researchfully, and she said,
oh yeah, so I you know he took that film.
I said, did he develop And she said, oh, yeah,

(39:52):
there's pictures of the bodies from the concentration camp. And
I said, oh my god, so what did you do?
What did he? So I asked my mother and I said, Mom,
do you remember when when your brother came back from
the war and he had these pictures And she says yeah.
I said, did you see them? And she goes, yeah,

(40:13):
we were horrified, she said, but we didn't believe it.
She said, he showed it to the neighbors. Nobody believed
that it was true. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting.
This is empirical evidence, and they still didn't believe it
because it was so horrific. Anyway, So yeah, so, you know,

(40:38):
I think that a lot of people have a history
that intersects their lives, but they have never gone into
the past to look. They've never asked their parents or
their grandparents what happened. And I think all of us
have lessons to be learned from history. You know, obviously
the last of the people from wormwarth two are now

(41:00):
dying off. They're in their late nineties, and you know,
those stories need to be told. Still, we need to
remember and obviously in this country people are not remembering
the lessons of history.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
And yeah, clearly I'm wondering if there's a memoir waiting
to be written. Have you ever thought of writing your
own memoir?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Yeah, I've been so busy, you know, but one day, Yeah,
I think it would be interesting because I feel like
I've seen a lot, and I've experienced a lot, and
I've been all over the world and I've been able
to see how people are and people are very similar

(41:46):
all over the world. I mean, you see, even in
the film industry, if I go down to Argentina, all
of the camera systems are very insane. They're like the
ones in Hollywood. You know, the person who's doing the
lighting is very similar to the person who's doing the
lighting in Hollywood. I Mean, there's just it just makes
me laugh because I'm like, it's the same kind of

(42:07):
personality type that could draw in to him. But people,
you know, are this. You know, we're the same all
over the world, and we you know, whether you go
from an indigenous person who's fighting for their right to
their land in Latin America, you know that their land

(42:29):
is being taken away from them because of water or
mining or whatever, it's the same here in this country.
Can you imagine if somebody came into this, you know,
upstate New York and tried to take your land for whatever,
you know, which is imminent domain, which they have, I mean,
there would be outrage.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
So you know, part of.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Our society is predicated on who has the loudest voice,
you know, and who can be heard. And I think
that that's one of the reasons why I think for me,
film is really important because you know, we're able to speak.
They were able to give voice to stories that would

(43:11):
never be seen before, you know, whether it's a documentary
or political film. You know, like you know, we see
these films coming out much more now.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
I want to talk about art and your very early
art influence, and I read somewhere that you in the
early days enjoyed sculptures very much. Caught your eye. Talk
a little bit about if you would those sort of
artistic heroes that you were influencer with turning your head

(43:45):
when you were very small, What were your very earliest
memories of art and the power of art?

Speaker 1 (43:53):
I would say, interestingly, I'd have to say that had
to do with the ancient world. I was really interested
in the ancient world in Sumer, Mesopotamia, the tigers, Euphrates,
Valley Egypt. I was really fascinated as to, you know,

(44:16):
the kind of art that we would see, they are
the kinds of I mean, hieroglyphics was fascinating to me
as a pictorial way of communicating uniform you know, so
what does that mean? How do you get meaning from that?
They were trying to put together meaning? You know, when
you look at the hieroglyphics, it's like this meaning that
meaning this meaning you know. So I was kind of

(44:36):
fascinated with that, and I was also fascinated with the
texture of the ancient world and the color. And then
I think, you know, for me, sculpture is something I've
been very tactile with my hands. But I think when
you look at sculpture and space and you think about

(44:57):
space in a different way and how an object takes
up a space or you know, how does it manifest
what does it say about our space? And I think
when I first saw the work, early work Marina Abramovinch,
you know, I was really taken by what she was doing.

(45:18):
You know, there were other artists at the time when
we were talking the seventies, you know that we're working
with earth, that were taking sculpture to a completely different
place than it just being a physical, literal manifestation of
an idea. You know, when you look at Leonardo da Vinci,

(45:38):
you know, the way that he would depict his sculpture
was much more realistic, but he was also someone who
explored ideas and space and how things display space and
that kind of thing. When but it wasn't until modern
times that I started. I was influenced by it, and

(46:01):
I would go to the library and spend hours and
hours in the library and just love being in the
open stacks and just going to the art department and
just sitting there on the floor and looking through all
of these books and being influenced by what I was seeing,
you know, painting and was interested in the light and dark.
But it had never occurred to me that actually I

(46:23):
could do that as a profession, you know, I mean,
my father was very much in the straight and narrow
of you know, be a lawyer, doctor or whatever. You know.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Did they take you to galleries and museums.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
No, never, but they did take us to restaurants. My
father was one of the original foodies, and he was
very much into Asian cooking, so or any kind of cooking.
He was. He loved cooking from around the world. My
brother also was very much into cooking. My brother, when
even in high school, would groind his own curries for

(46:59):
Indian food. But you know, we would go and this
is a different time in New York. You know where
New York had markets. I remember Ninth Avenue used to
be full of these markets where you could go and
get They would you know, you'd see bags of spices outside,
much like you still see in Europe or you see

(47:20):
in the Middle East, you know, or in Morocco. You
know where the spice guy is out there. So that
was very much about New York. We would go to
the Lower East Side. My father would talk to the
Shimmis pickles guy and go and you'd get pickles and
a barrel, right, And we were always going to all
the markets, the food markets, and he would take us

(47:41):
walked a month to go try a new Chinese restaurant
or a different kind of dish in Chinatown. So I
knew Chinatown really really well. You know as a child.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Does that mean you're a good cook? Are you interested
in cooking too?

Speaker 1 (47:55):
I do love cooking, but you have to have time
to cook, and I'm you know, not a whole lot. Yeah,
well yeah, but I do like cooking. I mean at
a certain point I was doing like a course Chinese
males when I was in college. But you know, just
being really interested in It's a form of art cooking,
you know, the form of putting together flavors and that

(48:19):
kind of thing. So but I do remember distinctly when
I was a kid, we would be driving away from
the city and I watched the World Trade Center is
being built, you know, through the back window of the
stage lagon.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
What other interest did you have as a child growing
up there, when you know, just early childhood and then
in your teenage years, did you do any sports or
anything like that?

Speaker 1 (48:45):
Oh? Yeah, very much so, so I was doing all
the sports I could. So this was before Title nine,
so before women were allowed to be in sports, right
or before women's sports are recognized So from the time
I was in sixth grade, I played softball. I played everything.

(49:05):
I played basketball, field hockey, softball. That's all they had
at the time, right there was no volleyball, no soccer, nothing.
It was just field hockey's softball, and basketball. And I
played all three and we were really good. You know.
Our team, our softball team was sixty and zero when

(49:25):
we graduated from high school. It was the same group
of girls who went through I went to public high
school and we won the state championship. And you know,
it was also another I think, way for me to
in body community, you know, when you're a team member

(49:47):
and also being leadership, So having leadership experience because I
was often the captain on the team, and you know,
and that involves leadership and that you know, you have to,
you know, take your team through. And I saw when
I was on set, you know, as a director or
a cinematographer, you were the leader.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Once a captain, always a captain. Bro I could see
that it's a constant thread through your life. But the
one thing I wanted to talk about because it has
shaped obviously how you see the world, is that you
had a hearing loss as a small child, from illness.
How did you become aware of it and how it

(50:32):
would translate into who you became and what you did
for a living.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
I think it had a huge influence on me. I
mean it influences everything I do, even today. And you know,
they didn't discover that I was I had a hearing
problem until I was four and I was in kindergarten
and my teacher would call me with my back turned
and I would turn around. So she told my mother
and that started a whole kind of inquiry as to

(51:02):
what had happened. They think that when I was an infant,
I probably had eye fever because in those days they
didn't have the same kind of ways of dealing with it,
you know. And you know that at that time, hearing
loss was associated with you know, uh, you know, you

(51:27):
were considered more stupid. I mean, it's it's a disability
in some ways. And you know, I just I look
at today where they fired all those people who are
in the disability department in the Department of Education, and
I think, oh, my god, you know, it's so stupid.
But I and you know, I got hearing aids as

(51:48):
a child, which I hated. You know, they were not
the hearing EDGs were completely different than they are now,
and so I refused to wear them. And you know,
what's what's interesting about being part of the partially deaf
world and the hearing world is that people don't know
that I have a hearing loss. So if you don't
hear someone when they're talking, because a lot of people mumble,

(52:13):
is that they think you're stupid. You know, you say
excuse me, and they think it's because you're stupid, not
because you can't hear them. So for years, you know,
there's this kind of attitude of you know, you're stupid.
But I knew I wasn't stupid. You know, it was
top of my class when I graduated. You know, it's

(52:37):
just you know, I knew that I knew better. But
as a child, you feel that discrimination, you feel that judgment,
and I think I had to fight that my whole life,
you know, and I know that, you know, it's like
people don't realize that you're death. And it was only

(52:58):
until much later as an ant, I would say, no,
if you speak a little more clearly than I can
hear you, because I can't hear you, you know, so
just throw it back on someone else. But I think
that there's a lot of people in the world who
can't hear, and they it's a stigma. And the reason
why it's a stigma is because early on people thought

(53:21):
that hearing was seen as a disability and that you
weren't perfect. And that also they associated hearing loss with retardation,
mental retardation, and that has been something that has carried
through because I have very good friends who have hearing

(53:42):
loss and they don't want to wear hearing age. I'm like,
you don't understand how much you're missing, you know, don't
let it the stigma of it overcome you. And I
have to say, my life was changed because the hearing
age would never up to snuff. You know, the technology

(54:03):
was way behind. So when I was doing Eternal Sunshine,
for example, and I would have my hearing aid in
my ear with the camera very close to my ear,
which because we handheld the whole movie, there would be feedback,
so there would be so the sound person would say,
what does that sound? You know, so I'd have to

(54:24):
take my hearing aid out because otherwise I was causing
sound because they weren't, you know, the technology hadn't caught
up yet.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
So also I.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Knew as a filmmaker, you know, I wanted to be
a filmmaker before I became a cinematographer. And I realized,
I have to hear, you know, you have to be
able to hear. And it was for me something that
held me back in a real way, and that when
I went into cinematography, it was a safe place to

(54:56):
be because I could be behind the camera, I could
zone out all of the crazy madness around me and
I could just be in my head and look at
what's going on through the viewfinder and I was in
my own world and I loved being there. But I
did know that I had more to say. I wanted

(55:16):
to say more. I wanted to go back to being
a director and being a filmmaker. So it wasn't until
I got asked by Monte Scossese to follow Bill Clinton
in Africa on his Global Initiative tour. It was so
it was the CGI right, Clinton Global Initiative, which was
a great thing which I witnessed first hand when I

(55:40):
went to go and follow Bill with the camera to
see what he was doing there. And you know, he
was making such a difference there because he was in
providing programs to enable people to help themselves. So he
was really reversing colonialism in a real way, right, Like

(56:01):
in Rwanda, he said to you know, buy Starbucks would
buy a month of Rwandan coffee. It would help the people,
the farmers, to have a distribution outlet. Then they could
help them get the country back on its feet. Right.
So when I was there, one part of CGI which
was really important was that he was friends with this

(56:25):
guy who ran the Starky Corporation, right or who was
the head of it, This Bill who would take a
team of his audiologists and would go to uh with
the team around Africa, and they went all over the
world Global initiative. But I went with them in Africa,

(56:48):
and so I distinctly remember every time we would go
to a we'd be at a hotel. So let's say
we would be you know, it's the of course, the
fanciest hotel in addis Aba, right, But on the lawn
would be two hundred chairs open dub and in those
seats would be these villagers who would come and all

(57:11):
of them would have hearing gaid molds in their ears. Right,
And you're talking people from all walks of life, right,
poor people, you know, people I mean all walks of life,
all ages. So then they would invite the person up
to the little place where they had like maybe five audiologists,

(57:35):
and on the table next to them would be these
hearing gains, right, and so they'd sit the person in
the chair and they would put a hearing aid into
the into the tube and you know, they were all
over the ears and they you would see the person
go to the to the person bob, no reaction, right,

(58:00):
they go to the next highest amplification, right, the next
the hearing aid that had the next amplification, no reaction.
Then they go to the highest one and the strongest
hearing that there is. And I'm talking a sixty year
old woman right, who's deaf her whole life. They put

(58:23):
it in and they go up and you see this
woman's eyes open up and she goes and you see
people here for the first time ever, time and time again,
little kids, old men, and you see how they give

(58:44):
them the gift of hearing. And it really is so moving,
you know. And you see this when they see the
it's like a blind person scene for the first time.
So I went to them and I'm like, hey, guys,
you know, I said to Bella. I said, you know
I have a hearing problem and he said you do

(59:05):
and I said, yeah, you know, I have eighty percent
loss in this ear, my right ear, which is a lot,
and twenty in the other ear. And he says, oh,
come see me. So he says, I'll give you some
hearing it. So I went to go see him at
the Stocking Corporation in Minneapolis outside of Minneapolis, and he

(59:28):
fitted these hearing gates and they were in the ear
hearing aids and they were kind of the news latest technology,
and he said, I fit all the presidents right. He said,
these are the same hearing aids as the president. And
I cannot tell you my life was changed. It was
like I had a whole other awareness of the world.

(59:50):
I could hear things I could never hear before, Like
you know, I'm out here in the country and my
friends would say, oh, did you hear that owl? No?
Did you hear those coyotes? No? But with these hearing aids,
I could hear them. I felt like the world opened
up around me. And that's why I think that, you know,
for a lot of people who are afraid of getting

(01:00:13):
hearing aids because it's a stigma because they feel like
something's wrong with them. You know, they're missing so much.
It's not a stigma, you know. You know, I almost
felt like, oh, give me ones that are hot pink.
Let me just announce it and go. You know. But
I think that's the way it has to be, you know,

(01:00:35):
with that kind of thing. That is how society works
in terms of, you know, trying to make people feel
badly about themselves when it's unnecessary, you know. And I
think that the disabled the world, you know, to confront
that every single day. It's that judgment that you're not perfect.

(01:00:56):
And believe me, I tried to be perfect for a
long time and I realized it doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Obviously. Color and light critical senses. And I'm wondering which
you see first when you look at a scene, Is
it the light or the color?

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Very interesting the question because for me, it has to
do with the feeling and very much the feeling. And
that was one reason why I was really interested in
exploring meaning, which is I went to Brown to be
an etyptologist after I took a photography class my second

(01:01:37):
year because I realized I could take classes that wrote
down school design, which is where I really wanted to
be you know, I could take two classes a year
and it opened up my world in a different way,
and I realized I wanted to get into the visual
world like photography and film, and I was interested in
this idea of propaganda even way back when. So I

(01:01:58):
went to Frontrance to study for a whole year to
study structural linguistics and also meaning because because the Frends
were very much involved in the course of study called
la simiology, right, La simiology was as we know as
some semiotics, but it's really the study of meaning. So

(01:02:20):
that's what I was really interested in, is so what
makes a photograph meaningful? What colors do you perceive? First?
What light? How does light work on your perception to
be meaningful? And it's something that is interesting because it's

(01:02:40):
it's not something you can really codify, you know, or say, oh, yeah,
well the light was streaking through here and then have
that certain feeling, although if people look at the photograph
of Grand Central Station, you know, in the nineteenth century,
when the light was streaming through those windows, and has
a certain feeling which also I think mirrors in nature.

(01:03:04):
But but there are certain colors too which affect us emotionally.
You know, yellow is different than you know than cyan
or green or blue, or you know, the secondary colors
influences differently than the primary colors. Like I have an
affinity for certain colors. I really like, you know, secondary

(01:03:27):
colors more than the primary colors. But if you're a painter,
you might want to work more in you know, bold
primary colors. So it really has to do with I think,
personal taste and flavor. But also I do think that
art is influenced by cultural opinion and norms as well.

(01:03:54):
When you think about, you know, some of the painters
who were you know, seen as whole verbal painters in
their day, and now their canvases are going for millions
of dollars, you know, so you know it's it's it's
about trend, but it's also about people appreciating, you know,
the work for its for its certain intrinsic value or

(01:04:18):
you know. So I think it's for me, I think
I'm influenced by all of that. It's really hard for
me to watch a film about analyzing it as it
goes along, not only for its look, but for the
performances and and just talking about going back to childhood influences.
I was really interested in theater when I was in

(01:04:42):
high school, so I was also doing place, you know,
acting in place, and that's a whole other experience. You know,
when you think about getting into the mind I have
a character becoming a character. I mean, it really said
to me a lot about emotion and taking on the

(01:05:05):
emotion of a certain character, and that character, you know,
was able to convey a certain a certain feeling to you.
I mean, it's it's very interesting, and you know it
has to do with you know, they portrayal of it
and that you know, the actor behind them, because I

(01:05:27):
think then an actor can become a character, but at
the same time that there's still present. I mean, look
at Diane Keaton who just passed away. You know, she
was very much Diane Keaton, but she would become these
other characters and you would believe those characters, and that
was what was so delightful about the range of her work.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Did that give you confidence then when you were doing
theater in school, Ellen, And I'm wondering, because you had
that hearing impairment, how it might have influenced you because
of the things you just said as a child and
going into that world and becoming another character Where did
that confidence come from? Was it there before you went

(01:06:10):
onto the stage or or did acting give you that confidence.

Speaker 1 (01:06:16):
I think I hadn't give me that confidence because because
I had to feel it. You have to know what
it feels like to go out there. You know, It's
just it's not easy. You know, stage fright is you know,
is always I mean not always there, but you know,

(01:06:38):
it was there. But I realized, because I've spoken a
lot in front of audiences now during the course of
my whole career, as that what propels me forward is
the intention of what I want to say. So that's
the most important thing is to do iron convey that

(01:07:00):
message or whatever one is saying, you know, and I
suppose the you know, for actors, you know, the ability
to be able to you know, allow that character to
come forth is what's tantam out like. It was very
funny because An Eternal Shine The Thoughtless Mind, which is

(01:07:23):
a film that you know, much beloved by many people.
When we were making it, Michelle said to me, and
then I want to put you in the movie. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no,
I just you know, I'm behind the scenes, you know.
I was the cinematographer on that film and very engaged

(01:07:43):
in every part of the making of that film. And
so when he said I want to put you in there,
I just couldn't imagine, you know. And he says, oh, no,
I want to put you behind this door. You know.
So when the camera comes around, then you know, we
think it's going to be Kate and it opens it
up and it's you. And so, you know, I was
doing I was hand holding the whole movie. So I

(01:08:05):
had to ask my b camera operator to do this big, long,
single shot. Right I go to hair and makeup, I get,
you know, the deal. And I realized that when I
was standing there behind the door, because the camera had
to come through the door. Jim had to come through.
You know, it's this long hallway shot where the camera

(01:08:27):
is leading him and he goes through and he goes
to talk to the doctor and he had a different
wardrobe on, and then you swung around and whenever the
camera comes through, it had to push the camera and
away because I kept on hitting the doorframe. So I'd
wait for it and push the camera through, and then
the door would close and I would be behind the door.
And I swear it was an existential crisis because I'm

(01:08:49):
standing there in the darkness, going, oh my god, what
am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to look?
My faith? And I suddenly realized was like, I'm glad
and not an actor, you know. And then in the
end he ended up making all over our faces some
sort of massive flesh anyway, so I didn't have to

(01:09:09):
worry about Vie. But I had no idea, you know,
But I realized the absolute terror of what it means
to be an actor.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Sometimes that was a different pathway at a different time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Yeah, very much.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
I'm wondering now where you find your validation because often
I ask painters sculptors, is it when they finish the
work in the studio or is it when it's shown
to the public. Where does the validation come for you?
Because there's also the awards too that give you further validation.

(01:09:44):
But is it when you wrap? At what point do
you feel that is the work that and I validate
it myself.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
I think it's probably in It happens while we're on
set sometimes where when you're you're creating a scene, and
I know that as a director now, when you know
when the scene falls into place, there's a sense that

(01:10:16):
we did something good. We made We made meaning out
of what were words on a page, which is really
incredible to me when you think about you take a
blank page and you put words on it, or the
writer puts roars on it, and then you take those
words and you're able to take and create this whole

(01:10:38):
scene around it and create something real and tangible. For me,
that's the magic of cinema. You know where it started from,
just this black white on the page. And I think
I felt that too when I was shooting. You know,
when there's a certain kind of feeling that comes out
of what you've created in front of you with the

(01:11:00):
with the camera. And I remember as a cinematographer often
when everybody would be ready on set, everyone, the actors,
the dolly grip me, you know, the gaffer, the sound people,
everybody's when the when the director would say action, all

(01:11:20):
of a sudden, the wheels start turning and you're all
in this other world for that time. And it's really
interesting because then then they stay cut. It's like okay,
there's that sense of relief. And I would always run
the camera a little bit longer. It's because the actors
would always stay in character that extra beat, and sometimes

(01:11:44):
there was a moment there that was really beautiful or usable,
or they would look but there was that sense of
the magic that happened in that of creation, everybody coming
together in synchronicity to create that scene.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
Where is the joy for you today? Not just at
work when it play?

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
I have to say, I think if I wasn't in
the film industry, I think I would be an animal, right,
I know, I really I'm so connected to animals, and
you know, we humans forget that we are animals and
the way that we treat animals as lesser beings. But

(01:12:29):
they're actually a lot smarter than we are in many ways.
And you know, so I feel like I get a
lot of joy from experiencing the animal world, and I
wish I could do more to protect them from us,
from humans. But also I've been you know, I love

(01:12:50):
seeing films. You know, now it's Oscar time and I'm
a governor in the Academy and so I'm very involved with,
you know, helping people to see films and watching films,
and you know, every time I walk out of a film,
I'm a changed person. You know. It enables me to
see something else about life of the world, and I

(01:13:14):
really enjoyed family. I'm trying to spend more time with family.
You know, it's hard in the film industry because you know,
we the industry requires a huge commitment and passion and time.
You know, it's not like we have regular hours at all.
You know, like you can't predict when you're going to

(01:13:35):
come home because you could be on set for three
more hours. But there's you know, there's there's the joy
in making something, but I think there's also the balance
of trying to find, you know, when you can say
no to something so that you can spend more time
with the family. And that's the hardest thing because when

(01:13:57):
we're in a freelancer's life, you know, it's it's harder
to do that because as a freelancer, you think, Okay,
when's my next job? You know, am I going to
work again? And I'm really lucky because I have the
option of saying no. But a lot of people don't,
you know, especially now, you know, with the economic situation

(01:14:19):
the way it is, the film industry has been pretty
hit hard.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
What's missing in your life?

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
I want to direct more films. I want to direct
another film, so that I think is my next call
is you know, it takes a long time to develop
a film and to get it going.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
As you know from your first experience.

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
Yes, it just it just does you know everybody who
makes a film it's a miracle. So I mean, it
really is. So I want to do that next. And
I want to go see more art. I want more
time to take things in rather than always get to
get out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
So going to see art, then exhibition showings, galleries. You
must know a lot of artists whose work you admire.
Are you a collector I have.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
I wish i'd become a photography collector. In fact, actually
one thing that I do want to do is I
have a wooden eight by ten camera still photography, and
I bought some sheep film for it. You know, each
negative is very big, and I wanted to start taking
some photographs with this old eight by ten camera. So

(01:15:34):
I think I want to go and take do a
series about the farmers, the dairy farmers who are still
in existence here in upstate New York, because you know,
it's a legacy that's dying out because of big agriculture.
You know, these mega companies are taking over and so

(01:15:56):
family farms are all disappearing. Thus, so I think I
want to go and do a series on that. So yeah,
so I want to do kind of more personal work
at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
Lots to do, Ellen, lots to do. We're going to
hop over to YouTube now and I've got a few
fun questions to ask you. But for here on the podcast, Ellen,
thank you so very much for being my guest. It's
been a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
Okay, thank you, Thank you so much, Chris, it's been
a pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
And if you hop over to our YouTube channel, The
Art Podcast, you'll find a fifty minute video where Ellen
shares more thoughts of her philosophis and her values. And
we also have some fun too when Ellen reveals the
six guests, living or dead, who she would invite to
dinner and what they would talk about. So do join

(01:16:50):
us there on the YouTube channel, and don't forget that
if you scroll down the show notes below the podcast player,
you'll find the full transcript of this episode, as well
as links relating to this podcast, And don't forget you
can reach us via email too at The Art Podcast
at gmail dot com. Don't forget that's Art with two a's.

(01:17:11):
And if you've enjoyed this episode. Please do share it
with others who you think might enjoy the show too.
My thanks again to my guest this week, Ellen Curras,
and to you for listening. I'll be back in two
weeks time, when my guest will be the multimedia installation
artist Lori Ann Minnicottsi. So I do hope you'll join
me then

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“Ellen Kuras: The Vision Behind the Lens — Mastering Storytelling in Film & Cinematography

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}“Ellen Kuras: The Vision Behind the Lens — Mastering Storytelling in Film & Cinematography