Frankenstein Productions

Frankenstein Productions offers the work of Ellen Frankenstein, who has been producing documentary photography and video for over two decades. This site comprises a sampler of her life among transitional cultures the world over and expresses how people create a sense of place and community, and balance lifeways, in a rapidly-changing world. Franken... stein has lived and worked in places as diverse as the Los Angeles barrio and tiny Alaskan villages; her projects have taken her the island nations of Cuba, Barbados, and Tonga as well. Now settled down in the island town of Sitka, Alaska, working with local youths--whom she has taught the techniques of documentary craft--Frankenstein also free-lances as director, producer, editor, cinematographer, and still photographer. She has found a home in her island studio in the shadow of Verstovia Mountain. She has also crossed the Pacific on an old wooden sailboat with her husband Spencer--camera in hand, of course. Compassion expressed through the technology of imaging--that's what you'll find in the photos, films, and programs outlined here. Aside from the award-winning documentaries, Miles from the Border, A Matter of Respect, Carved from the Heart, and No Loitering, you will find other thought-provoking and at times whimsical explorations into the underside of adventure in Uncertain Passage: A Sailing Story, impermanence and public housing in Demolished, and the bumpy and troubled local experience of the global economy in Stuck on Sugar, a documentary about the dilemmas of modern plantation economy. Her work also encompasses much more than cinema. As one critic has noted: "Those who know Frankenstein as primarily a filmmaker, however, may find themselves stunned by the evocative power and raw courage, compassion, and intimacy of her twenty years' worth of documentary still photography. Her work--including series on Cuba, Nicaragua, South-Central Los Angeles, and the forest and tundra of Alaska, and deeply personal work such as Artifacts--displays an immediacy and ...Read More