Lifetime Achievement Honoree Ellen Kuras, ASC

Stuart Crowner will interview Ms. Kuras about her career and show clips from her various projects on, Saturday, November 3 at 4 pm in the OAC Gallery.

ELLEN KURAS, ASC
Director, Cinematographer, and Producer

Academy Award-nominee and Primetime Emmy winner Ellen Kuras, ASC makes significant contribution to cinema with her visionary, eclectic work as a director-cinematographer. One of the first women members of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), she is widely regarded as a pioneer for all filmmakers. She easily moves between the studio and independent film worlds with a repertoire that includes narrative, documentary, music films and commercials. Since 1990, she has received many awards, beginning with a Student Academy Award for her first film as a cinematographer on the documentary Samsara. For her first film as a director, The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), she was nominated for an Academy Award and a Spirit Award,

Well-known for her visually stunning work on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Blow (2001), she is the unprecedented three-time winner of the Best Dramatic Cinematography at Sundance. She has also won the Eastman Kodak Focus Award, Women in Film Kodak Vision Award and has been nominated numerous times for the Emmys and the Independent Spirit Awards. She was the first cinematographer to receive a Gotham Award for her entire body of work.

Ellen has collaborated with directors such as Michael Gondry, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Sam Mendes, Jim Jarmusch, Errol Morris and Rebecca Miller. With Steve Zaillian, she worked on HBO’s The Night of and with Martin Scorsese on the pilot of Vinyl as a second unit director/cinematographer. After her TV directorial debut on USA Network’s Falling Water, she immediately went on to direct episodes 7 and 8 of the Netflix Original show Ozark, starring Jason Bateman and Laura Linney. She then directed an episode of Legion with Noah Hawley, two episodes of the AMC show The Son and two episodes of the new series Umbrella Academy for Netflix.

For her latest project, George Clooney invited her to join him and Grant Heslov to direct Catch 22, a six-episode limited series slated to premier on Hulu. She also directs commercials for clients such as NIKE, COKE, APPLE and DELTA. Ellen has been honored in special artist retrospectives at the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Walker Center for the Arts in Minneapolis. She serves as a grand jury member for various films festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and International Jury of the Berlin Film Festival. She has maintained her membership in the Academy since 1997.