For over thirty-five years, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker David Ellis has produced television and video productions including documentaries, educational films and public relations programs.

The Disney Channel, Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, PBS and international TV networks have broadcast his films on subjects in criminal justice, the arts and popular culture. Excerpts have been featured on the BBC, ABC News, A&E, and the History Channel.

Ellis produced and directed the film, Doing Time, completed at the State Penitentiary of New Mexico just six weeks before the infamous 1980 riot that destroyed the facility and killed 33 inmates. A classic documentary about life behind bars, it was broadcast on PBS and overseas. Awards include “Best Documentary,” Aspen Film Festival.

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Land of Enchantment is his Disney Channel special on the cultures, history and landscape of New Mexico. Other productions include Tattoo: Beauty, Art & Pain for Discovery Channel, and the educational film series, ºSplendors of the Ancient World, made in association with The British Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. And just completed, The Magic of Words, on writer Rudolfo Anaya.

Ellis has interviewed an unusual range of people, including: cowboys, novelists, dancers, writers, tattoo artists, railroad engineers and Fortune 500 CEOs. Also, killers and FBI agents. Acclaimed actors Martin Sheen, John Hurt and Hal Holbrook have narrated films for him. His location experience includes filming in England, Ireland, Holland, Israel, Mexico, Canada and throughout the United States.

Financial support for Ellis’s independent films has come from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Freeman Foundation, McCune Charitable Trust and Public Welfare Foundation. Other funders have included the Blakemore Foundation, Norman Lear Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For corporate clients in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Ft. Worth and New York, Ellis Productions has completed over ninety programs in employee communications. Clients have included Burlington Northern Railroad, PacifiCare Health System, and Times Mirror Corporation. For his corporate work, Ellis won the Gold Medal in international competition for Best Video Magazine Show at The International Film and TV Festival of New York. After 26 years in Los Angeles, David Ellis now lives in New Mexico.