Trey Ellis

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Art Works Podcasts

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Filmmaker, writer, and teacher Trey Ellis knows how to tell a story—whatever the genre. He recently moved into documentary filmmaking, working with the acclaimed documentarian Peter Kunhardt on what became the award-winning King in the Wilderness. They joined forces again almost immediately for the documentary True Justice--about Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI)-- which opened the 2019 AFI Docs Film Festival (a long-time National Endowment for the Arts grantee). The film looks at Stevenson’s work tackling death row appeals at EJI as well as his more recent work as a public historian. Stevenson is also responsible for both the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which commemorates the nearly 4,000 persons lynched in the south, and The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which spotlights how the effects of slavery and Jim Crow reverberate through the criminal justice system today. In this podcast, Ellis talks about bringing Stevenson’s work to the screen, how his approach to filmmaking changes based on the visibility of his subject, and the ways in which his films have profoundly changed his life. He also discusses writing for screen versus for the stage and the challenges of teaching screenwriting in a quickly-changing media landscape.