Alison Ellwood

The Wonderland Massacre & the Secret History of Hollywood

Michael Connelly takes viewers on a wild journey into the twisted story of the massacre at Wonderland Avenue on July 1, 1981 – one of Hollywood's most famous murder cases that has fascinated people for more than 40 years.

Release Date:2024-09-08

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Episode Count:4

Vote Count:2

San Francisco Sounds: A Place in Time

This two-part docuseries celebrates the musical and artistic renaissance that exploded in the Bay Area from the mid-sixties into the mid-seventies. Featuring the music of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Steve Miller, and many more.

Release Date:2023-08-20

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Episode Count:2

Let the Canary Sing

A chronicle of Cyndi Lauper's meteoric ascent to stardom and her profound impact on generations through her music, ever-evolving punk style, unwavering feminism and tireless advocacy. This documentary takes the audience on an engaging exploration of a renowned and pioneering artist who has left a remarkable legacy with her art.

Release Date:2023-06-14

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:8

How to Change Your Mind

Author Michael Pollan leads the way in this docuseries exploring the history and uses of psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and mescaline.

Release Date:2022-07-12

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Episode Count:4

Vote Count:39

Totally Under Control

This documentary puts a spotlight on the White House’s failed response to the global pandemic and how it could have been prevented. Featuring damning testimony from public health officials and hard investigative reporting, director Alex Gibney reveals a system-wide collapse caused by a profound dereliction of presidential leadership.

Release Date:2021-05-05

Department:Production

Job:Executive Producer

Vote Count:16

The Eisen Hour

The Eisen Hour is a weekly hour-long, six-episode series featuring Emmy nominated broadcaster, Rich Eisen. Each week, Eisen will sit down with some of the most dynamic personalities from the world of sports and entertainment. True to his style, Rich will unearth unique stories and opinions using his total recall of all things movies and pop culture. Each week highlights a joyful, engaging, and oftentimes hilarious look at the world of entertainment through the lens of Eisen’s uncanny interviewing style.

Release Date:2021-01-23

Character:Self - Guest

Episode Count:1

Vote Count:1

Medicating Normal

One in five Americans is taking a psychiatric drug, including millions of children. Pharmaceutical companies have over-hyped the benefits of these drugs, while hiding the risks and severe side effects including physiological dependence. "Medicating Normal" explores what happens when for- profit medicine intersects with human beings in distress.

Release Date:2020-09-15

Department:Production

Job:Consulting Producer

Vote Count:1

Laurel Canyon

Featuring all-new, original interviews with Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Michelle Phillips, Graham Nash, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Roger McGuinn and more, this uniquely immersive and experiential two-part docuseries takes us back in time to a place where a rustic canyon in the heart of Los Angeles became a musical petri dish.

Release Date:2020-05-31

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Episode Count:2

Vote Count:9

Women of Troy

Women of Troy is an HBO Sports documentary exploring the transcendent career of the Cheryl Miller-led USC Trojans and their impact on women’s basketball.

Release Date:2020-03-10

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:2

The Go-Go's

As the first all-female band to play their instruments, write their songs and have a No. 1 album, The Go-Go’s made history. Underpinned by candid testimonies, this film chronicles the meteoric rise to fame of a band born in the LA punk scene who became a pop phenomenon.

Release Date:2020-01-24

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:36

Locked In

As a young girl Victoria Arlen truly had the world ahead of her. But at the age of 11, she began to suffer from an illness that baffled her doctors and kept Victoria locked in her own body.

Release Date:2018-08-03

Department:Directing

Job:Director

American Jihad

Documentary probe into the phenomenon of home-grown Jihadism, analyzing the strategic outreach and tactics employed by terrorists in order to reach susceptible members of society and what can be done to prevent it. Featuring intimate stories from former Jihadists radicalized to commit violent acts of terrorism and their families and communities caught in the crosshairs.

Release Date:2017-03-25

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:2

Spring Broke

Documentary charting the raucous history of the infamous spring vacation revelries in Daytona, which started in the early 60s, and by the 1980s led to the arrival of tens of thousands of college students, lured by lust, booze, fun in the sun and eventually, the hope to make it onto MTV.

Release Date:2016-03-22

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:3

No Limits

Suffering from scoliosis as a teenager, Audrey Mestre found freedom in the ocean. Years later, she discovered another reason to love the water: the elusive, often raucous free diver Pipin Ferreras. As Mestre follows Ferreras's almost spiritual quest to push his limits underwater, she moves from supporter to ardent free diver to world-class competitor. Then a challenge from a rival pushes the couple to the brink of what is possible, both above and below the surface.

Release Date:2013-07-23

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:3

History of the Eagles

Alison Ellwood’s intimate, meticulously crafted patchwork of rare archival material, concert footage, and unseen home movies explores the evolution and enduring popularity of one of America’s truly defining bands.

Release Date:2013-02-15

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Episode Count:2

Vote Count:42

Magic Trip

A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s fabled road trip across America in the legendary Magic Bus. In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “The Merry Band of Pranksters,” a renegade group of counterculture truth-seekers, including Neal Cassady, the American icon immortalized in Kerouac’s “On the Road,” and the driver and painter of the psychedelic Magic Bus.

Release Date:2011-08-05

Department:Directing

Job:Director

Vote Count:27

Casino Jack and the United States of Money

A probing investigation into the lies, greed and corruption surrounding D.C. super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies.

Release Date:2010-05-09

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Vote Count:29

My Trip to Al-Qaeda

Journalist Lawrence Wright brings his multilayered one-man play to the screen as he discusses how a reporter remains objective while covering highly charged issues such as 9/11, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's past and the history of Islam. Wright examines the Muslim religion, Al-Qaeda's rise to power and bin Laden's complicated relationship with the rulers of Saudi Arabia in this riveting documentary from Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney.

Release Date:2010-04-21

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Vote Count:11

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Fueled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey, and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true "free lance, " goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity, and a steel-eyed conviction for writing wrongs. Focusing on the good doctor's heyday, 1965 to 1975, the film includes clips of never-before-seen (nor heard) home movies, audiotapes, and passages from unpublished manuscripts.

Release Date:2008-07-18

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Vote Count:118

American High

American High is an American documentary television show about the lives of fourteen students at Highland Park High School, located in the city of Highland Park, Illinois. The series originally aired on Fox and was canceled after four episodes. It was later picked up by PBS and aired in its entirety. The series was created by R. J. Cutler, an award winning documentary filmmaker. The show received the 2001 Emmy Award for Outstanding Non-Fiction Program. The theme song "American High", was written and performed by Bouncing Souls. An earlier Fox Network documentary series from 1991, Yearbook also covered the lives of suburban Chicago high school students.

Release Date:2000-08-02

Department:Production

Job:Producer

Episode Count:14

Vote Count:1

In Search of the Happy Ending

Showtime's "In the 20th Century" is a millennium-related series of feature-length documentaries in which famous directors take on major subjects of their choosing. In the first of the six films, "In Search of the Happy Ending," filmmaker Garry Marshall delves into the institution of marriage as it has evolved in America throughout the past 100 years.

Release Date:1999-06-14

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Influenza 1918

Influenza 1918 is the story of the worst epidemic the United States has ever known. Before it was over, the flu would kill more than 600,000 Americans - more than all the combat deaths of this century combined.

Release Date:1998-02-09

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Vote Count:2

Prisoners of the War on Drugs

From its beginning during the Reagan years through current times, the War on Drugs has left many victims stranded in the prison system. PRISONERS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS reveals life behind bars in the nation’s prisons. Each prisoner has his or her own story, but for most, the story is predictably similar; they have been criminalized for drugs or drug related offenses, locked up with easy access to substances, and given little opportunity for rehabilitation. This film provides an inside look at the prison system, its prisoners and a war on drugs we do not seem to be winning.

Release Date:1996-01-08

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Vote Count:1

Dominoes: An Uncensored Journey Through the Sixties

The Dominoes Movie is an audio-visual album of the sixties. Not the chronological 1960s, but the electric, turbulent decade of rock, revolution, and the Vietnam War. The Dominoes Movie focuses on a succession of thirteen evolutionary tableaus, conveying the director’s view that one thing leads to another, as in the domino effect where one change or event causes a similar one, which then causes an additional one, and so on in a linear sequence. A portrait of the Vietnam War decade without narration and presented entirely via news footage and a soundtrack featuring BB King, Marvin Gaye, The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Santana, Neil Young, CSN&Y, Van Morrison, The Incredible String Band, Canned Heat and David Peel.

Release Date:1991-01-01

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Vote Count:2

American Patchwork: Songs and Stories of America

From 1978 to 1985 Alan Lomax traveled the American South and Southwest with a television crew to document regional folklore with deep historical roots. From the resulting 400 hours of footage came the five-program series American Patchwork, which aired on PBS in 1991.

Release Date:1990-07-06

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Episode Count:1

An Empire of Reason

Docudrama about the debate surrounding New York State's ratification of the United States Constitution. Historical figures wear modern dress and use familiar language to help today's audience understand firsthand the forces that shaped this country two hundred years ago. The argument, characters, passions and debating points are historically accurate, but the language and the medium of the debate is modern in form. Present day newscasters and commentators play themselves, reporting on the events of the 1780s as though they were occurring now.

Release Date:1988-07-03

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Tanner '88

In 1988, renegade filmmaker Robert Altman and Pulitzer Prize–winning Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau created a presidential candidate, ran him alongside the other hopefuls during the primary season, and presented their media campaign as a cross between a soap opera and TV news. The result was the groundbreaking Tanner ’88, a piercing satire of media-age American politics.

Release Date:1988-02-15

Department:Editing

Job:Editor

Episode Count:12

Vote Count:6