2017 (Production)

2017-02-10 (Production)

English (Original)

Interviewee: Ellen Kuras
Interviewer: Betsy McLane

Professional production

United States

Cinematographer Ellen Kuras is interviewed by Betsy McLane at the SciTech Imaging Lab in Hollywood in 2017. Kuras discusses her upbringing, her initial entry into art and cinematography, and her early politics as a documentarian. She details the collaborative process of her works from SWOON (1992) to SUMMER OF SAM (1999) and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004).

Cinematographer Ellen Kuras is interviewed by Betsy McLane at the SciTech Imaging Lab in Hollywood on February 10, 2017. Kuras was born in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. She discusses her early involvement in theater and possessing an awareness of how storytelling can alter an audience’s point of view. While studying anthropology and semiotics at Brown University, Kuras recalls her interest in the art and its potential to influence social change. She recounts her involvement with a local natural history museum where she curated a photographic series on Southeast Asian immigration politics. She credits this experience as further fostering her interests in documentary filmmaking. Kuras speaks about earning a Fulbright fellowship to attend the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester and moving to New York where she made Super-8 shorts with a small cadre of guerrilla-style filmmakers. She talks about the group’s 1987 trek to El Salvador to film ethnographic footage on the refugee crisis, noting how this theme of identity politics resonated with her. Kuras speaks on how this opportunity led to her first cinematographer assignment for director Ellen Bruno’s thesis project SAMSARA: DEATH AND REBIRTH IN CAMBODIA (1990). She shares anecdotes on the film’s production and subsequently earning a Student Academy Award for Cinematography. Following the success of SAMSARA, Kuras details her role as cinematographer on the dramatic film SWOON (1992) while remarking on her experimental approach to photography. Kuras provides insight into her cinematographic process for films with collaborators Rebecca Miller (ANGELA, 1995; PERSONAL VELOCITY: THREE PORTRAITS, 2002; THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE, 2005), fashion filmmaker Douglas Keeve (UNZIPPED, 1995), and Mary Harron (I SHOT ANDY WARHOL, 1996). She recounts stories surrounding her close working relationship with Spike Lee, documenting the technical details on SUMMER OF SAM (1999) and BAMBOOZLED (2000). Kuras reflects on how documentarian experience allowed her to inconspicuously film actors and capture the essence of their performance, citing examples as director of photography for ANALYZE THAT (2002) and her first collaboration with Michel Gondry, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004). She goes on to discuss her second Gondry film BE KIND REWIND (2008) and describes her utilization of both celluloid and tape-based formats. Kuras closes with an overview of her future film ideas and philosophizes on the pointed differences between the roles of a “cinematographer” versus “director of photography.”

Ellen Kuras (born 1959) is a cinematographer whose body of work includes narrative and documentary films, music videos, episodic television and commercials in both the studio and independent worlds. After earning a double degree in anthropology and semiotics at Brown University, she studied photography at Rhode Island School of Design and 8mm filmmaking in New York, with the plan to become a documentary filmmaker. Kuras has been a working cinematographer since 1987, and is known for her intense work style, supportive collaboration with directors and crews, and her insistence on interpreting the event in each scene through her camera. In 1999 she was invited to join the American Society of Cinematographers and is one of its few female members. She is known for her work on ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004) and has collaborated with directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Lee, Sam Mendes, Jim Jarmusch, Rebecca Miller, and Martin Scorsese. She is the three-time winner of the Award for Excellence in Dramatic Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival for SWOON (1992), which was her first dramatic feature after getting her start in documentaries, ANGELA (1995) and PERSONAL VELOCITY: THREE PORTRAITS (2002). In 2008 her directorial debut, THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON), which she co-directed, co-wrote, co-produced and shot, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

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