Ellen Freyer has 20 years experience as an independent producer of award-winning documentary, live action and animated children’s and family entertainment. She began her career in film production working as an assistant editor to pioneer documentary filmmaker George Stoney. Freyer’s concerns about issues affecting women and children led to her first independent film, Girls’ Sports: On the Right Track that dispels myths and explores new opportunities for girls’ created by Title IX. Marathon Woman: Miki Gorman, which premiered at the New York Film Festival in Lincoln Center, also confronts gender stereotypes by profiling a Japanese/American runner whose age and tiny size did not deter her ambition. Arafat’s Legacy protests the training of generations of Arab children to kill and hate rather than to study and create. Ms. Freyer’s films have been awarded $160,000 in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NYS Council on the Arts, and the NY Foundation for the Arts, the Women’s Fund-Joint Foundation Support, the Hoso Bunka Foundation (Japan), Mitsubishi International and the Australian Film Foundation.

Ms. Freyer moved from documentary to fiction when she was invited to join WQED/PBS Pittsburgh to create “Wonderworks,” a weekly family movie series for PBS. As managing director of the New York office and a production executive Freyer supervised development and production in the US and abroad. She initiated and packaged programs generating over 2.5 million dollars annually in co-financing, and obtained a distribution deal, which increased international revenues by more than fifty percent.  Among the movies and mini-series she supervised were Jacob Have I Loved starring Brigit Fonda, Sweet 15, starring Tony Plana and Jerry Stiller and Necessary Parties starring Alan Arkin and Mark Paul Gosselar. Co-productions with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK included The Little Princess (UK), The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe (UK), Clowning Around (AU), The Haunting (NZ) and Anne of Green Gables (CA), which won over 15 awards included the Peabody, Emmy, and Prix Jeunesse. During its seven years on the air Wonderworks programs won 125 awards and was described as the “Best Family Drama Series” by TV Guide and the “Best Children’s Programming” by the TV Critics Association.

When Wonderworks ended Ms. Freyer continued as an independent producer of quality children’s and family programming for the international co-production market. Prince Brat and The Whipping Boy, The Secret Garden, The Summer of the Monkeys and Anatole, were based on award winning children's books and generated over $17million dollars in production funding. Prince Brat and The Whipping Boy, starring George C. Scott, was produced with Jones Entertainment in France and Germany for the Disney Channel; The Secret Garden, a feature length, animated, original musical version of the classic children's story, was produced in the US and Wales for ABC; It stars the voices of Sir Derek Jacob, Honor Blackman, and Glynis Johns and was a Humanitas Award finalist Summer of the Monkeys, a coming-of-age drama set on the western plains in the 1880's, starring Michael Ontkean and Wilfred Brimley, was produced in Canada and distributed by Walt Disney; and Anatole, an animated series based on the Caldecott winning children’s books, was produced by Nelvana Communications in Canada  for CBS. 

  Ms. Freyer’s background includes an MA in Cinema Studies from New York University and a BA with Honors in Art History from Barnard College. Before working as a Producer, Ms. Freyer was an adjunct lecturer in Film History and Appreciation at St. Peter’s College NJ, Hunter College NYC and Syracuse University NYC program. Recently she had the pleasure of teaching again, this time using her industry experience to teach students in the Green Ambassadors program at Environmental Charter High School in Lawndale, CA. With only three Saturdays to learn and prepare, the students developed a script and filmed two professional and two student actors for three days on eleven sets. Their 14-minute video, A Day in the Life premiered at the ‘08 LA Environmental Expo and demonstrates simple changes anyone can make to ‘go green.’

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Ellen Freyer Productions

 Honors and Awards

Awards

New York Film Festival, Lincoln Center

Cable ACE award

Golden Reel Award

National Education Award

Cine Golden Eagle

Blue Ribbon, American Film Festival

Festival du Reel, Paris

Museum of Modern Art NYC, Screening

Sinking Creek Film Award

Humanitas Award, Finalist

National Council on Family Relations, Honorable Mention

Toronto Film Festival

Crystal Heart Award, Heartland Film Festival

Best Feature Drama, Audience Award, Marco Island Film Festival

Breckeridge Festival, Best of Festival

Grants

National Endowment for the Humanities

NY State Council on the Arts

NY Foundation for the Arts

Women's Fund-Joint Foundation Support

Mitsubishi International, Japan

Hoso-Bunka Foundation, Japan

Australian Film Foundation.

Publications

”Adapting Children’s Literature to Film,”

The Lion and the Unicorn, Johns Hopkins University Press

“Profile of Nell Cox- Feminist Filmmaker”

Feminist Art Journal, Summer 

“Women’s Experimental and Personal Film Festival“

Feminist Art Journal, Fall 

“Three Women’s Films and the Whitney”

 Craft Horizons Magazine, April 

“Formalist Cinema: Artistic Suicide in the Avant-Guard”

Velvet Light Trap, University of Wisconsin

“The New York Underground Film,”

 Craft Horizons Magazine

“Chronicle of a Summer: Ten Years After”

The Documentary Tradition, L Jacobs Editor, Hopkinson and Blake

Cinema Studies, Adjunct Lecturer

Hunter College, NY

Syracuse University, NYC

St. Peter's College, NJ

   Faculty Advisor, Student Film Society 

   Director and Host, St. Peter’s Centennial Film Festival

   Panel talk with guest artist, Frank Capra

Guest Speaker

NY Women in Film, Production East Conference

National Conference of Teachers of English,

New York University

National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences

St. Peter’s College

Teachers College, Columbia University

Marymount College

Nassau Community College

American Library Association

Great Neck Library, New York

Mt. Sinai Hospital

Juror

EMMY awards

ACE Awards

Student Academy Awards

San Sebastian Film Festival, Spain

New York Film and Video Festival

International Festival of Films by Women

American Film Festival

Brooklyn Academy of Cultural Affairs, student film grants