Ellie Walton grew up dancing to the electric slide at neighborhood block parties in Washington, DC. After watching race riots engulf her street in flames in the early 1990s, she became aware of the deep inequalities and distrust that divided her community and city. As a teenager she discovered her own creative voice in a Saturday girls group, writing poetry and plays and making sense of the world through a dress up box. It is here she realized the power and necessity for creative expression and storytelling, as a vehicle for building mutual understanding and compassion.
Ellie has since committed her life’s work to sharing stories that inspire connection across social and cultural dividing lines. Since 2006, she has directed and produced documentaries with communities across her hometown: public housing residents fighting displacement (Chocolate City, 2007), day laborers searching for the American Dream in a Home Depot parking lot (Igual Que Tú, 2009), and theatre artists imagining change in schools and prisons (Walk With Me, 2012). Key to her process is the deep engagement with the community, which she is not only documenting but also collaborating with. She takes time to build relationships and trust with people, actively involving them within the storytelling process: handing over the boom pole, sharing the lens, and bringing them into the edit room. This participatory method draws from her ongoing experience facilitating media education workshops with communities across the District. For the past two years she worked at Meridian Hill Pictures, a DC based documentary production company that is committed to working with communities to co-create honest stories that assign new value to each individual’s unique perspective and voice.
Ellie’s participatory approach to filmmaking has been recognized by the Humanities Council of Washington DC, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the recipient of the 2011 Mayor’s Arts Award, the highest honor given to an individual artist in Washington, DC.
Today, Ellie is working on the completion and distribution of her two most recent DC based feature documentaries, set for release in 2014. Fly By Light (produced by One Common Unity in association with Meridian Hill Pictures), follows fifteen DC youth into the mountains of West Virginia on an eight-day journey to rewrite their futures. Voices From Within (co-produced by Video Diary Productions and Meridian Hill Pictures), explores the complicated process of recovery and redemption through the eyes of four individuals in care at Saint Elizabeths psychiatric hospital.
She is currently in a village in Gujarat, India, leading a digital storytelling residency with teenage girls who dropped out of school and are now trying to overcome social barriers to get back in education.
Ellie is grateful for all those who have supported, collaborated and shared their stories with her along the way. They have made it possible for Ellie to hold onto the belief that films have the power to reveal beauty in surprising places, inspire reflection and dialogue, and make a better world irresistible.
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