Ellen Kuras
Ellen M. Kuras (* July 10, 1959 in New Jersey, United States) is an American cinematographer and documentary filmmaker.
Life
Ellen Kuras M. grew up in a suburb in New Jersey. Originally they wanted to study Egyptology at Brown University and decided to follow for social anthropology. However, her interest changed when she attended courses at the nearby Rhode Iceland School of Design about photography. She studied for a year in 1979, therefore, film theory at the University of Paris and then went back to Brown, where she graduated with a double degree in semiotics and anthropology. She then worked in a museum in Providence and decided to refine their camera skills, which is why she took part in Rochester at the Visual Studies Workshop. Then she took regardless of the payment to each film job they could get. She worked as a production assistant on documentaries, in sound editing and as a camera assistant.
With the documentation Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia, which was allowed to rotate as the first U.S. production in 1987 in Cambodia and show the effects of the civil war, Kuras debuted with the release in 1990 as independent cinematographer. In 1992, she celebrated with the film drama Swoon, a film biography of Leopold and Loeb, her debut as a feature film cinematographer. For this, she received a 1993 nomination for Best Cinematography at the Independent Spirit Awards. With the documentary The Betrayal - Nerakhoon Kuras debuted in 2008 as the director. It began in 1984 with the filming of the documentary, which tells the story of a family that flees from Laos to the United States. For this, she received an Oscar nomination in 2009 for Best Documentary its largest award.
2013 she was appointed to the jury of the 63rd International Film Festival of Berlin.
Filmography (selection)
Awards
- 2009: nominated for the Best Documentary with The Betrayal - Nerakhoon
- 2004: nominated for Best Cinematography by not Forget Me!