Ellen Spiro


Ellen Spiro is an Emmy Award-winning American documentary filmmaker.
Spiro is Professor Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin Department of Radio-Television-Film where she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in documentary, experimental film and music film production. She is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of CA at Berkeley.

Career

In 1988 Spiro was awarded a post-graduate fellowship in Manhattan to study art and critical theory in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. While in Manhattan, Spiro studied with Hal Foster and Douglas Crimp and was a cinematographer for experimental filmmaker Yvonne Rainer's award winning film, Privilege.
While in New York, Spiro became active in the AIDS activist organization ACT-UP and co-founded DIVA TV. While working with ACT-UP Spiro made her first documentary, Diana's Hair Ego, which was the first small format 8mm video to be broadcast on national television.
In 1993 Spiro was awarded funding from ITVS, the Independent Television Service, for her film Greetings From Out Here. Greetings From Out Here was the first ITVS program to be broadcast nationally and received an invitation to the Sundance Film Festival. It was acquired for international broadcasts by BBC, Channel Four, Canadian Broadcasting Company and others.
In 1994, Spiro took her first full-time teaching position at Hampshire College where she taught video production and Gender Studies. After teaching for a year she embarked on her second year-long solo road trip, to make Roam Sweet Home, funded by Channel Four in the UK and ITVS.
After the national broadcast of Roam Sweet Home on PBS, Spiro moved to Austin, Texas and became a professor in the Radio-TV-Film Department at the University of Texas.

2001–2007

In 2001, Spiro released her first documentary for HBO, Atomic Ed and the Black Hole. Spiro also created the 10 Under 10 Film Festival in Austin, TX.
In 2003 the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health approached Spiro and producer Karen Bernstein to make a film about the mental health care crisis for children in Texas. The resulting film, Are the Kids Alright?, won an Emmy Award and recognition from the Mental Health Association of Texas.
In 2005 Spiro and Bernstein produced Troop 1500, about a group of Girl Scouts with mothers in prison. Troop 1500 won two Gracie Awards, for Outstanding Director and Outstanding Documentary, from the American Women in Radio and Television.
In 2006, Ellen Spiro was awarded an artist's residency at the Bellagio Center, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, in Bellagio, Italy. She also began working with Phil Donahue on Body of War, a film about paralyzed Iraq War veteran Tomas Young. Body of War premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where it won a People's Choice Award and the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Hamptons International Film Festival. In November 2007, Body of War named as one of fifteen films to be considered for nomination for an Academy Award. In December, Body of War was named Best Documentary of 2007 by the National Board of Review. Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue appeared on Bill Moyers Journal for a one-hour special about Body of War.

Films