# Ellen Kuras

Ellen Kuras (born July 10, 1959) is an American cinematographer whose work includes narrative and documentary films, music videos and commercials in both the studio and independent worlds. One of few female members of the American Society of Cinematographers, she is a pioneer best known for her work in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). She has collaborated with directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Lee, Sam Mendes, Jim Jarmusch, Rebecca Miller, Martin Scorsese and more. She is the three-time winner of the Award for Excellence in Dramatic Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, for her films Personal Velocity: Three Portraits, Angela and Swoon, which was her first dramatic feature after getting her start in political documentaries.
In 2008, she released her directorial debut, The Betrayal (Nerakhoon), which she co-directed, co-wrote, co-produced and shot. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2009. In 2010, she won a Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Non-Fiction Filmmaking for the film.

## Early life and education

Kuras grew up in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Kuras had a fever as an infant, leaving her almost deaf in one ear and with about 20% hearing in the other.
She attended Cedar Grove High School, where she served as president of the school's chapter of the National Honor Society. After earning a double degree in anthropology and semiotics at Brown University, she studied photography at RISD and 8mm filmmaking in New York, with the plan to become a documentary filmmaker. In the early 1980s, Kuras planned to study on a Fulbright grant at a film school in Poland but was unable to go due to the introduction of martial law. She is of Polish descent on her father's side and the family surname was originally Kuraś.

## Career

Kuras began her film career in 1987, shooting Ellen Bruno's Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia, the first US movie filmed in Cambodia after the Vietnam War. In 1990 she won the Eastman Kodak Best Cinematography Focus Award for her work on Samsara. The film got notice from the Student Academy Awards and the Sundance Film Festival where it received Special Jury Recognition.
That same year, she was asked by producer Christine Vachon to shoot her first dramatic film (Swoon) for director Tom Kalin. The film won her the Sundance Award for Excellence in Cinematography in 1992. This was the start of work with Killer Films, which includes Postcards From America and I Shot Andy Warhol.
She worked for political documentaries, and, later, other genre of film and TV, such as big-budget movies (Blow, Analyze That), independent films (Angela, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), documentaries (Unzipped, 4 Little Girls), concert films (Lou Reed's Berlin, Shine a Light), successful TV movies (If These Walls Could Talk), commercials and music videos for musicians like Bjørk, The White Stripes.
In 1999, she was invited to join the American Society of Cinematographers, the fifth female member to join more than 400 male peers.
She has received accolades, including the Women in Film Kodak Vision Award in 1999 and was honored at the 2006 Gotham Award for her entire body of work. In 2003 she was the first film technician to receive the NY Women In Film and TV Muse Award, traditionally is given to actresses. In 2009 she was a special Honoree at the Santa Fe Film Festival for her work in the field of cinematography.
She has served on the juries of several film festivals. In 1997 she was invited to be on the jury of the Sundance Film Festival. In 2013, she was a member of the jury at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. In 2015 she was on the Jury of the Belgrade Film Festival and the Camerimage. She has guest-lectured at film schools and festival panels, including SVA, NYU, BU University of Texas at Austin, Walker Art Center, Hamptons International Film Festival, Camerimage, Berlinale and Woodstock Film Festival.

## Filmography
### Cinematographer
#### Fiction works

Short film
| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1990 | Traveling at Night | Chris Kraus | |
| 1992 | Nation | Tom Kalin | |
| 1993 | Geoffrey Beene 30 | Tom Kalin | |
| 1996 | The Dadshuttle | Tom Donaghy | Segment of Boys Life 2 |
| 1997 | My Perfect Journey | Andrew D. Cooke | |
| 2003 | Renee | Jim Jarmusch | Segments of Coffee and Cigarettes |
| 2003 | No Problem | Jim Jarmusch | Segments of Coffee and Cigarettes |
| 2019 | Blasphemy | Melissa London Hilfers | |
Feature film
| Year | Title | Director |
| 1992 | Swoon | Tom Kalin |
| 1993 | Romance de Valentía | Sonia Herman Dolz |
| 1994 | Post Cards from America | Steve McLean |
| 1994 | Roy Cohn/Jack Smith | Jill Godmilow |
| 1995 | Angela | Rebecca Miller |
| 1996 | I Shot Andy Warhol | Mary Harron |
| 1998 | Just the Ticket | Richard Wenk |
| 1999 | The Mod Squad | Scott Silver |
| 1999 | Summer of Sam | Spike Lee |
| 2000 | Bamboozled | Spike Lee |
| 2001 | Blow | Ted Demme |
| 2002 | Personal Velocity: Three Portraits | Rebecca Miller |
| 2002 | Analyze That | Harold Ramis |
| 2004 | Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind | Michel Gondry |
| 2005 | The Ballad of Jack and Rose | Rebecca Miller |
| 2008 | Be Kind Rewind | Michel Gondry |
| 2009 | Away We Go | Sam Mendes |
| 2014 | A Little Chaos | Alan Rickman |
Television
| Year | Title | Director | Segment |
| 1996 | If These Walls Could Talk | Nancy Savoca | "1952" |

#### Documentary works
##### Short film

| Year | Title | Director |
| 1989 | Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia | Ellen Bruno |
| 1992 | Guerrillas in Our Midst | Amy Harrison |
| 2003 | Asylum | Sandy McLeod |
| 2013 | Split | Ellen Bruno |

##### Film

| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1995 | Unzipped | Douglas Keeve | With Robert Leacock |
| 1995 | The Women Outside: Korean Women and the U.S. Military | Hye Jung Park J.T. Takagi | With Sandra Chandler, Herman Lew and Emiko Omori |
| 1997 | Poverty Outlaw | Peter Kinoy Pamela Yates | With Carlos Aparicio, Frank Cardon Jr. and Mark Webber |
| 1997 | Scratch the Surface | Tara Fitzpatrick | With Phil Abraham, Niels Alpert, Robert Bennett, Sarah Cawley, Trish Govoni and Kyle Kibbe |
| 1997 | 4 Little Girls | Spike Lee | |
| 2005 | Dave Chappelle's Block Party | Michel Gondry | |
| 2008 | The Betrayal – Nerakhoon | Herself Thavisouk Phrasavath | |
| 2010 | Public Speaking | Martin Scorsese | |
| 2014 | The 50 Year Argument | Martin Scorsese David Tedeschi | With Lisa Rinzler |
| 2016 | Monster in the Mind | Jean Carper | |
| 2017 | Jane | Brett Morgen | |
| 2017 | Trouble No More | Jennifer Lebeau | |
| 2019 | Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese | Martin Scorsese | With Howard Alk, Paul Goldsmith and David Myers |
| 2022 | Personality Crisis: One Night Only | Martin Scorsese David Tedeschi | |
| 2024 | Beatles '64 | David Tedeschi | |
Concert film
| Year | Title | Director |
| 2006 | Neil Young: Heart of Gold | Jonathan Demme |
| 2007 | Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse | Julian Schnabel |
| 2020 | American Utopia | Spike Lee |

##### Television

| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1995 | American Cinema | Alain Klarer | Episode "Film in the Television Age" |
| 2005 | American Masters | Martin Scorsese | Segment No Direction Home |
| 2009 | POV | Herself Thavisouk Phrasavath | Segment The Betrayal – Nerakhoon |
Miniseries
| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 1994 | A Century of Women | Chris Harty Barbara Kopple Judy Korin Sylvia Morales | |
| 2017 | Wormwood | Errol Morris | With Igor Martinovic |
| 2021 | Pretend It's a City | Martin Scorsese | |
| 2021 | Pride | Tom Kalin | Episode "1950s: People Had Parties" |
TV movies
| Year | Title | Director |
| 1991 | Danger: Kids at Work | Lyn Goldfarb |
| 2001 | A Huey P. Newton Story | Spike Lee |
| 2002 | Jim Brown: All-American | Spike Lee |

### Director

Documentary film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
| 2008 | The Betrayal – Nerakhoon | Yes | Yes | Yes | Co-directed with Thavisouk Phrasavath |
Feature film
| Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
| 2023 | Lee | Yes | No | No | |
TV series
| Year | Title | Episode(s) |
| 2016 | Falling Water | "The Well" |
| 2016 | Falling Water | "No Task for the Timid" |
| 2017 | Ozark | "Nest Box" |
| 2017 | Ozark | "Kaleidoscope" |
| 2018 | Legion | "Chapter 12" |
| 2022 | The Son | "The Blue Light" |
| 2022 | The Son | "Somebody Get a Shovel" |
| 2019–2020 | The Umbrella Academy | "Man on the Moon" |
| 2019–2020 | The Umbrella Academy | "Number Five" |
| 2019–2020 | The Umbrella Academy | "A Light Supper" |
| 2019–2020 | The Umbrella Academy | "Öga for Öga" |
| 2020 | Brave New World | "Soma Red" |
| 2022 | The Terminal List | "Encoding" |
| 2023 | Extrapolations | "2059 Part I: Face of God" |
Miniseries
| Year | Title | Episode(s) |
| 2019 | Catch-22 | "Episode 2" |
| 2019 | Catch-22 | "Episode 3" |
| 2022 | Inventing Anna | "Check Out Time" |
| 2022 | Inventing Anna | "Dangerously Close" |
TV movie
* Play is Your Superpower (2023)

## Awards and nominations

Academy Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 2009 | Best Documentary Feature Film | The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) (With Thavisouk Phrasavath) | Nominated |
Primetime Emmy Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1994 | Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program | A Century of Women | Nominated |
| 1998 | Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program | 4 Little Girls | Nominated |
| 2009 | Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking | The Betrayal – Nerakhoon | Won |
| 2018 | Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program | Jane | Won |
| 2021 | Outstanding Technical Direction, Camerawork, Video Control for a Special | American Utopia | Nominated |
Sundance Film Festival
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1992 | Cinematography Award: Dramatic | Swoon | Won |
| 1995 | Cinematography Award: Dramatic | Angela | Won |
| 2002 | Cinematography Award: Dramatic | Personal Velocity: Three Portraits | Won |
| 2008 | Grand Jury Prize: Documentary | The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) | Nominated |
Independent Spirit Awards
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 1992 | Best Cinematography | Swoon | Nominated |
| 2002 | Best Cinematography | Personal Velocity: Three Portraits | Nominated |
| 2008 | Best Documentary Feature | The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) | Nominated |
Online Film Critics Society
| Year | Category | Title | Result |
| 2005 | Best Cinematography | Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind | Nominated |