Ellen Bruno

História

Ellen Bruno is an award winning documentary filmmaker based in San Francisco. With a background in international relief work, Ellen’s films have focused on issues at the forefront of human rights. She began her relief efforts in remote Mayan villages in Tabasco, Mexico. She has worked in refugee camps on the Thai-Cambodian border with the International Rescue Committee, in Vietnamese boat camps with The Refugee Section of the American Embassy in Thailand, and as director of the Cambodian Women's Project for the American Friends Service Committee. She has also been a hospice worker for the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco. Ellen completed a masters degree in documentary film at Stanford University. She is a recipient of Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, a Goldie Award for Outstanding Artist, an Alpert Award for the Arts,an Anonymous Was A Woman Award for the Arts, a Shenkin Fellowship from Yale University School of Art, and was an Artist-in- Residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Ellen serves on the Board of the Buddhist Film Festival, the Pacific Pioneer Fund, and Ethical Traveler.Org. She is a strategic planning consultant with the Creative Capital Foundation’s Professional Development Workshops, working throughout the country to provide artists a cohesive structure to organize, plan and sustain creative careers.

Filmes

Skin of Glass
Skin of Glass
Writer
The Edifício Wilton Paes de Almeida, nicknamed the “Pele de Vidro (Skin of Glass)” for its windowed façade, was the first building of its kind in South America, a shiny symbol of Brazil’s promising future.
Quando Fazíamos Bullying
Quando Fazíamos Bullying
Script Consultant
Uma coincidência intrigante leva o cineasta a procurar seus colegas de quinta série e a professora para examinar suas lembranças e sua cumplicidade em um caso de bullying ocorrido há cinquenta anos.
Filmmakers Unite (FU)
Filmmakers Unite (FU)
Director
Um filme colaborativo que documenta diversos pensamentos e sentimentos sobre a atual situação política nos Estados Unidos, em 12 episódios dirigidos por cineastas independentes como Alan Berliner e Jay Rosenblatt. São filmes curtos pessoais, produzidos com a intenção de dar voz a diversas demandas dentro da comunidade do cinema independente americano, enfatizando o recorte de raça, etnia, classe, gênero, sexualidade e religião. O objetivo é apresentar uma resposta coletiva, mais poderosa e e ciente que as individuais.
Sky Burial: A Tibetan Death Ritual
Sky Burial: A Tibetan Death Ritual
Director
Sky Burial follows the ritual of "jha-tor", the giving of alms to birds in a northern Tibetan monastery - where the bodies of the dead are offered to the vultures as a final act of kindness to living beings. At the Drigung Monastery lamas chant to call the consciousness from the body. Juniper incense is burned to summon the vultures. Special body breakers, or "rogyapas", unwrap the bodies and cut away the flesh. The bones are crushed and mixed with tsampa, roasted barley flour. The entire body is consumed by the birds, assuring the ascent of the soul. The sky, or the universe, is where the sacred world lies. To merge with the sky after death is a holy event, one that replaces the sufferings of this world with peace.
Leper Life Beyond Stigma
Leper Life Beyond Stigma
Director
Leper provides a rare and intimate glimpse into a contemporary society of lepers in a remote village in Nepal. Villages speak openly and emotionally about their relationship to their sickness, to the "healthy" community outside the village boundaries, and the myriad stigmas and misunderstandings which surround a disease that has marked their bodies and their lives.
Leper Life Beyond Stigma
Leper Life Beyond Stigma
Producer
Leper provides a rare and intimate glimpse into a contemporary society of lepers in a remote village in Nepal. Villages speak openly and emotionally about their relationship to their sickness, to the "healthy" community outside the village boundaries, and the myriad stigmas and misunderstandings which surround a disease that has marked their bodies and their lives.
Sacrifice: The Story of Child Prostitutes in Burma
Sacrifice: The Story of Child Prostitutes in Burma
Director
Each year thousands of young girls are recruited from rural Burmese villages to work in the sex industry in neighboring Thailand. Held for years in debt bondage in illegal Thai brothels, they suffer extreme abuse by pimps, clients, and the police. The trafficking of Burmese girls has soared in recent years as a direct result of political repression in Burma. Human rights abuses, war and ethnic discrimination has displaced hundreds of thousands of families, leaving families with no means of livelihood. An offer of employment in Thailand is a rare chance for many families to escape extreme poverty. Sacrifice examines the social, cultural, and economic forces at work in the trafficking of Burmese girls into prostitution in Thailand. It is the story of the valuation and sale of human beings, and the efforts of teenage girls to survive a personal crisis born of economic and political repression.
Satya: A Prayer for the Enemy
Satya: A Prayer for the Enemy
Director
The personal testimonies of the courageous Buddhist nuns who have led the nonviolent resistance against the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia
Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia
Director
Made as a relief worker's master's thesis, this documentary chronicles the difficulties of rebuilding a community in post-Pol Pot Cambodia