Ellie Lee

moderator, award-winning Boston filmmaker

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Boston, Ellie Lee is one of those artists to whom pushing boundaries seems second nature. An animator with two award-winning shorts, Lee is also a seasoned documentarian. Her striking, charcoal-animated documentary, *Repetition Compulsion*, dealing with abused women, went on to become the first animated film to be broadcast on the acclaimed PBS documentary series, P.O.V. "It was conceived originally as a documentary, but the animation came about because I had these skills and abilities in that field and that seemed like the best way to tell the story, with the movement of the charcoal drawings capturing the violence without needing to actually show the women's faces." In 2000, Lee made the transition to live action, fiction narrative with her latest work, the haunting and elegiac short, *Dog Days*, a cautionary tale that takes place in a futuristic wasteland. "With Dog Days I really felt that my past as an animator and studying doc filmmaking at Harvard really came together to help make it a better film, says Lee. The film took top honors at the 2000 Hamptons and Florida Film Festivals, and is currently running on IFC.