Director of photography Ellen Kuras, ASC, a two-time recipient of the Sundance Film Festival's Best Cinematography Award, was first widely recognized for her black and white cinematography on Swoon, Tom Kalin's critically-successful independent feature film about the Leopold and Loeb murder case of the 1920s. Her work on the film earned Best Dramatic Cinematography at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an IFP Independent Spirit Award. She and Kalin later made 30, a half-hour narrative film commissioned by Geoffrey Beene.

Her next features, Postcards from America and Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, opened at the 1994 New York Film Festival.

Kuras' photography on the feature film Angela won another Best Dramatic Cinematography Award at Sundance in 1995 - the first time a director of photography has won this award two different times. That same year, she was also nominated for an Emmy® Award for her work on Century of Women.

Kuras began her career in 1987 and garnered 25 international awards for Samsara. Her photography on that film earned her the 1990 Sundance Film Festival Jury Award and Eastman Kodak Best Documentary Cinematography Focus Award. Among her other credits are Unzipped, I Shot Andy Warhol, Niggericans, a segment of HBO's Subway Stories, and If These Walls Could Talk, Part I. Kuras shot Spike Lee's Academy Award®-nominated documentary 4 Little Girls, for which she was nominated for an Emmy. Kuras' credits include Just the Ticket, Mod Squad, Summer of Sam, Bamboozled and the current release Blow.