Films
Ellis has received numerous international film festival awards while occasionally directing music videos, television shows and commercials. His films are perhaps best characterised by their diversity in both genre and medium, including drama, comedy, experimental, documentary and animation.
Ellis comes out of a strong tradition of regional British filmmaking. He is a very resourceful filmmaker who had embraced a DIY ethic even before digital technology made that option straightforward. Most importantly, he's an actor's director, and his ability to draw out convincing performances, often from inexperienced young actors and non-professionals, makes his films powerful, whatever the genre (Shots magazine)
Soft, commissioned by Film 4 and UK Film Council’s Cinema Extreme scheme won thirty-eight festival prizes including the International Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Short Film at the British Independent Film Awards, and both BAFTA and European Film Awards nominations.
I came across a short film recently which blew everything else I had seen that week out of the water. After it was over, there was no question of doing anything other than lying on the sofa with a cushion on my face, whimpering in fear and paranoia. 'Soft' is shocking and violent, and ingeniously, intimately upsetting in a way I can only compare to the controversial scenes in Gaspar Noé's Irréversible. The film reminded me of an essay I read by the late Alexander Walker about Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange: that the film was not merely about violence but about something deeper, darker, more unsayable: a fear of our children, and older people's fear and hatred of the young. (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
Over a dozen retrospectives of Ellis' eclectic catalogue have been presented at film festivals in Japan, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Romania, Netherlands and the UK. He continues to attend many festivals as either filmmaker or juror and persists working with the short form despite beginning a career in feature films.
The films 'Telling Lies' and 'Soft' both feature on the Cinema 16 DVD collection, on 'British Short Films' and 'World Short Films', respectively. Alongside short films by Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Guillermo Del Toro, Mike Leigh, Lynne Ramsay and many others, Ellis is the only director to feature twice in the series.
Read more about this topic: Simon Ellis (film Director)
Famous quotes containing the word films:
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)
“Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they’re doing and saying in films right now just shouldn’t be allowed. There’s no dignity anymore and I think that’s very important.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)